chengdu college & the olympics

Update August 8: My acquaintance finally did manage to get his new residence permit without having to go to prison.

Someone wrote that the website of the US embassy in China had a message confirming that several foreigners in China have indeed recently been imprisoned for overstaying their visas or residence permits. I haven’t found this item on the website, nor any other confirmations via news search engines. Please let me know if you have any more information about this.

Someone else commented that the US government frequently incarcerates foreigners for overstaying their visas, so the Chinese government’s alleged adoption of this practice is no worse than that, and the standard Chinese practice of fining offenders 500 yuan per day is much more lenient than the US’s standard practice of immediately sending people home with a record that often prevents them from ever getting permission to enter the US in the future. Of course both should be condemned, along with national borders and governments in general, which mainly serve the interests of national ruling classes and cause all kinds of problems and suffering for most people everywhere. But – as with the Tibet question – this is another area where the tendency for people (both Chinese & Western, & both liberal & leftist) to condemn the Chinese goverment for allegedly being more oppressive than Western governments simply does not hold water. Even those political science indices that attempt to quantify “freedom” or “democracy” and thus “prove” that the Chinese government’s oppression of its own people may be worse than, say, the US government’s oppression of its own people, these indices say nothing about the US government’s oppression of people in other countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan – an oppression upon which the US people’s relative “freedom” and higher standard of living arguably depends. The system of state oppression in an international system of interdependent oppressions - the system as a whole should be condemned. See this interview w/ Naomi Klein & Christian Parenti on "How Beijing Olympics Highlight Globalization of Police State, Inequality" for an example of this interdependence.

Below is the original message my acquaintance sent last week. I would like to add that it is not in fact necessary to return to China to renew a residence permit - it can be renewed at a Chinese embassy or consulate in another country if you have the necessary paperwork. Also, institutions with more experience in this sort of thing can take care of all the legwork for you. It is not necessary for the foreigner to personally go to the local police station to register, to go to the experts office to get a foreign experts permit, or to go to the PSB to get a residence permit - the person in charge of these things at your work unit should be able to do all this legwork for you. So let this be a warning to anyone considering taking a job at Chengdu College, or any institution that is not very experienced in dealing with foreign employees.

I have been told that I may have to go to jail or be repatriated for
overstaying my residence permit, although the fault seems pretty
clearly to lie with my supervisors at Chengdu College
(四川师范大学成都学院),
who have also insulted me and caused numerous expenses and other
problems. I did manage to submit an apparently complete application to
renew my permit in the nick of time, so in theory everything should
work out ok. Next Tuesday we will know for sure. I seriously doubt
I'll get locked up, but if by some chance I do, I'll have a friend
send out names & phone numbers to contact.

In the past the punishment for overstaying one's visa or residence
permit was a fine of 500 yuan per day, but I have been warned by two
authorities that now, "because of the Olympics," the government has
started locking people up with the intention of sending them home
after the Olympics. I asked one authority whether this was because the
government feared that if we were repatriated immediately we would
contact international media (the way the British woman of Tibetan
descent and other recently expelled foreigners have done), but he
declined to answer. A couple friends said that "lock [me] up" probably
means house arrest (ruanjin) rather than prison. I'm curious to know
whether any other foreigners have been incarcerated recently for
overstaying their visas or residence permits, as I haven't seen any
reports about this.

Below is the whole Kafka-esque story, in excruciating detail. Like I
said, I seriously doubt there will be any further serious problems, so
the main reason I wrote this is to think through what happened and
share it with friends, just for laughs.

Chengdu College is a so-called "independent college" (duli xueyuan),
meaning that it is a privately owned college set up as a money-making
venture, aimed at providing degrees (in this case baccalaureate and
associate's degrees) to students whose college-entrance exam scores
are too low to allow them into (state-owned and -operated)
universities. In order to grant degrees, independent colleges must be
formally affiliated (guapai) with universities, but this affiliation
is merely nominal. CC is affiliated with Sichuan Normal University.

This will be my third semester to teach English language & American
culture here. Despite numerous problems – conflicts w/ my supervisors,
etc. – I have renewed my contract with this school twice, mainly
because I like my students and the kind of students who go here in
general (contrary to the expectation that independent schools would be
full of spoiled rich brats, in fact most of my students are from poor
rural families and many are eager to learn and more capable of
thinking critically about the real world than most students I've
taught at universities). I also have more freedom in organizing my
courses here than I would at other schools in Chengdu, I've developed
friendships with some of the staff here, I've heard that authorities
at other schools are no less unreasonable than those here, and I just
can't be bothered to transfer to another school.

I signed my first contract with this school in late 2006. As my visa
to "intern" at Sichuan University (another long story – actually a
professor there had informally agreed to provide room & board in
exchange for my teaching services, but I ended up paying SU for the
privilege of working there!) was about to expire, I asked an authority
at Chengdu College to provide the materials for me to get a work visa,
but she obviously had no experience in this sort of thing, and I was
the first foreigner to work for CC. She simply handwrote a letter of
invitation on a piece of CC stationery and put a stamp on it. I knew
it wouldn't work, but I just happened to have the proper materials
from SU to get a new "business" (F) visa (the reason I had those is
another long story), so when the Chinese embassy rejected CC's
handwritten letter, I was still able to get an F visa, re-enter the
country, and work (technically illegally) for CC for one semester.

In preparation for my second semester here I finally managed to talk
my supervisors into getting me the proper materials for getting a work
visa (Z). The process of getting those materials ended up costing me
hundreds of yuan (which CC refused to reimburse me for), many hours of
going to the wrong offices due to CC's incorrect directions, a missed
train due to CC holding me up, forcing me to throw away more money on
plane tickets to attend a wedding, and so on. After I had gone home
for the summer, CC finally managed to mail the complete package of
materials just in time for me to pay about 100 US dollars for express
visa-issuing service, and I received the work visa a few days before
my return flight to China in the summer of 2007.

Upon returning to Chengdu, Jia "Bettina" Chen ( 陈佳，商务英语教师
& liaison for foreign employees) accompanied me to the PSB (Public
Security Bureau), where we submitted my passport and other materials
to get what I was then calling a "residence permit" (juliuzheng – I can't
remember the Chinese term Bettina was using at the time, but it turns
out I was wrong and this later became a major factor in my "crime";
incidentally, neither of my supervisors speak sufficient English for us to
communicate in English, even though they are both English instructors,
and one of them, "Mr. Huang" ( 黄毅，外语系主任, is the head of the
English department –  you'll see a sample of his English writing below,
which is much better  than his speaking and listening, but still pretty bad
considering his position). A week later I went back by myself to pay several
hundred yuan (for which I was not reimbursed, of course), and I was given
back my passport along with a red booklet with the words "foreign expert permit"
(waiguo zhuanjia zheng) in Chinese and English on the cover, and an expiration
date of July 30, 2008. I assumed this to be my residence permit, since
when I was a student at a Chinese university a few years ago, I had
been given a similar booklet that I think was called a "foreign
student residence permit" (liuxuesheng juliu zheng). Since no one at
CC said anything to me about this booklet, or the fact that what the
PSB had granted me was in fact not this booklet (the booklet came from
another entity – the zhuanjiaju or "experts office") but a sticker
inside my passport called a "residence permission" (juliu xuke), which
also expired on July 30, 2008, and since every time someone asked for
my "visa" or "ID card" (such as when a cop knocked on my door one
night looking for unauthorized migrant workers) I gave them this red
booklet and they seemed to treat it as if it were indeed my residence
permit, so I continued to assume that's what it was, and to be unaware
of the new sticker in my passport – until the shit hit the fan last
month.

In preparation for my third semester here (after skipping spring
semester 2008 to go home and take the general exam for my doctoral
program, among other things), in December 2007 I told my supervisors
that I would like to resume teaching here in the fall of 2008, and
that I wanted to go ahead and buy a round-trip plane ticket. Of course
no school in China that I'm aware of manages to nail down the dates or
even number of weeks in a semester until a few days before the
semester starts – at which time the faculty are expected to
immediately drop their plans, come back to the school, and come up
with a syllabus – but my supervisors said they were pretty sure the
semester wouldn't start until some time in September, and my course
wouldn't start until a couple weeks into the semester, so I bought a
ticket to return the first week of September – and I told them that. I
asked about the materials for getting a new work visa (and I
explicitly said "getting a new work visa" – ban xin de zhiye
qianzheng), and they said to wait until the start of spring semester
to talk about that, since they knew I wasn't leaving until March. So
at the start of spring semester I talked to Bettina about this again,
and she checked to make sure she had the right mailing address and
contact information so she could mail the materials to me (at this
time I already thought they were being careless by not getting the
materials together earlier, since they could have just given them to
me before I left and saved themselves the postage). I asked her to
make sure to get them to me by the first of August so I would have
plenty of time to get the new visa before my flight in September, and
she agreed to do that.

When I arrived in the US, I threw away my foreign expert permit
because at the time I still believed it to be a residence permit which
would expire on July 30, before I returned to China in September, and
which would be useless anyway since Bettina had already agreed to
send me the materials to get a new work visa, after which I would have
to get a new residence permit upon returning to China. This was the
main act of the "crime" that may still get me locked up or
repatriated, and which has already cost me several hundred dollars,
lots of time and trouble, and an onslaught of insults from Mr. Huang
and various other school and government officials.

In mid-June I received an email from Bettina telling me that I needed
to return to Chengdu to renew my "visa" (qianzheng) before it expired
on July 30. I wrote back that my visa had already expired a year ago,
a month after I had last entered the country, and that if she meant my
residence permit, I had thrown that away because she had agreed to
send me the materials to get a new visa in August. She wrote back that
if I had thrown away my residence permit, that meant that I had thrown
away my passport, b/c my residence permit was a sticker in my
passport, and then she added a vague threat that if I had thrown away
my passport they could no longer employ me. (It was also a strange
threat, since I couldn't enter the country anyway, and even if I
could, I don't remember any clause in our contract about throwing away
passports!)

At this point I looked in my passport and finally discovered the
residence permission sticker. I wrote back that I had not thrown away
my passport, and that I had been mistaken, that the red booklet I had
thrown away must not have been my residence permit, and if not, then
what was it and was it important? I also added that there were other
reasons I could not change my plans, for example that I had spent most
of my savings on tuition and other expenses, and I was in the middle
of a translation job that would not pay until I finished in August, so
I could not presently afford to pay for a flight change,
transportation back to Chengdu, and two months living expenses there
until I got my first paycheck in September.

Instead of responding to any of this, she simply repeated that I must
return to Chengdu immediately, adding that renewing my residence
permit would be cheaper and easier than getting a new visa. Of course
she meant cheaper and easier _for her and the school_, on the
assumption that I would foot the bill for the added expenses and just
put up with the extra trouble. I wrote back and clearly listed in both
Chinese and English the extra trouble and expense changing plans like
this would entail, along with my phone number and a request for her to
call me if she still didn't understand.  She ignored the content of
this message too and again repeated her order for me to come back
immediately.

At this point I had been reading in the news about how a lot of
foreigners in China, including legitimate English instructors, were
being refused new visas due to the Olympics (I know it doesn't seem to
make much sense, but now it seems like almost anything can be
justified by saying "because of the Olympic"), so it occurred to me
that maybe this is what Bettina had in mind, and in any case, I
risked being refused a new visa, so I finally caved in. I wrote that I
would go back early on the condition that they reimbursed me for the
flight change, provided me a stipend for living expenses until I
received my first paycheck, and provided a computer I could use to
finish my translation job and my dissertation research proposal (which
is due in September, and which I've barely begun – you may wonder why
I'm wasting time on this letter instead of fulfilling these other
pressing obligations – well the reason is that I can't help thinking
about all this, so I thought writing it down would help somehow).
Actually the computer was already in our contract, but I just wanted
to make sure I could start using it as soon as I returned to Chengdu.
I also added that if they could just reimburse me for the flight
change as soon as I arrived, that should be enough to cover living
expenses for two months. Bettina wrote back a few days later that
they would reimburse me for the flight, but only on the condition that
this would "not set a precedent." I replied that I too hoped this
would not set a precedent, in that after this experience I hoped she
would not agree to one thing and then demand something else later on.
She didn't reply about my other requests, but I didn't expect them to
be hard to achieve, since she said she would be at the school when I
arrived.

I arrived in Beijing on July 22, only to discover that all the trains
to Chengdu were booked through the next week – again "because of the
Olympics," in particular because the government was forcing migrant
workers, Muslims, and Tibetans to leave. Even the cheaper airline
tickets were sold out. Luckily my girlfriend was with me (she had come
to Beijing to use the libraries, since the major metropolis of Chengdu
– China's third or fourth largest city – has no decent academic
libraries), and she had saved up enough money for us to buy two
expensive plane tickets to Chengdu on the 26th. (Incidentally, while
we were at the travel agency, two cops came by and told the clerks to
remove all the signs displaying destinations and prices, etc., from
their windows. They weren't even displays on the sidewalk, just signs
in the windows of their own shop. I asked the cops why and you can
guess the answer – "because of the Olympics." A couple days later we
went to the Great Wall only to find people standing guard, saying that
the government prohibits anyone from climbing on the Great Wall until
after the Olympics!)

I called Bettina and told her I'd be arriving on Saturday, the 26th,
and she said she had gone home for the summer (note that shortly
before that she had said she would be in Chengdu to help me). She told
me to call a couple other people, both surnamed Yu. I called one of
the numbers and it turned out to be someone at Sichuan Normal who
didn't know much about my situation, so I called the other number it
turned out to be a security guard at CC who didn't know much about the
situation either, but at least he kindly arranged for a car to pick me
and my girlfriend up at the airport. Bettina had said we needed to go
to the local police station (paichusuo) for something, so he took me,
and the sheriff gave me a residence registration form (zhusu dengji
biao) and told me to fill it out. I wasn't sure what to put in some of
the blanks, and neither was the sheriff or the security guard, so we
just guessed. I asked if I needed to take a copy for my application at
the PSB to extend my residence permit, but he said no, he would just
"put it online" (ba ta fang zai wang shang) on Monday and that would
be fine.

Our first task apparently accomplished, I called the other Mr. Yu and
he told me to wait until Monday and then meet him at the PSB. So I
called him again on Monday morning, and he told me to bring my
passport, two photos, and my foreign expert permit. I asked if the
foreign expert permit was that red booklet, he said yes, and I said I
didn't have that anymore, that I had thrown it away because Bettina
had told me she would help me get a new visa, and I had already told
her this but she insisted I come back and try to renew my residence
permit anyway. When Mr. Yu heard this, he seemed a little upset, but
he said he'd find out what to do and call me back.

About an hour later he called back and told me to "dengbao." I asked
what does "dengao" mean, and he said it means to "go to a newspaper"
(qu yi ge baozhi) and "register" (dengji). (He probably said something
more sensible than this, but I couldn't understand him through the
phone and his Sichuanese accent. For example he also said that I
should go to "renhe siji yishang de baozhi" – any newspaper that is
level four or higher – but later I figured out that he meant "shiji" –
municipal-level – this is a common pronunciation mistake for southern
Chinese). I thought he meant I needed to subscribe to a newspaper, so
I asked what did that have to do with my residence permit, and he
handed the phone to someone else who apparently was supposed to be an
interpreter. The latter spoke English to me in a slow, somewhat
threatening and urgent voice, but I still couldn't make out what he
was trying to say. So I just said, ok, I'll go "dengbao." Finally I
asked my neighbor, who speaks good Mandarin, and he explained that
"dengbao" means to post an ad in the classifieds section of a
newspaper, so they probably meant that we needed to go to the office
of a newspaper and post an ad that I had lost my foreign expert
permit, and that this was probably part of the formal procedure for
getting a replacement permit (even though I knew for a fact I didn't
lose it in Chengdu). I called the guy back & confirmed this, then I
found someone at the school who could drive me, and we spent the next
few hours driving around looking for a newspaper office.

First we went to the office of the Workers Daily. By the time we got
there it was already 2:30, but the "relevant personnel" were still on
lunch break. While waiting I texted Bettina, who had meanwhile taken
over as a not particularly useful or necessary liaison between me and
Mr. Yu, and had scolded me for throwing away my foreign expert permit
and not telling her about it earlier (although in fact I had asked her
about it, not knowing what it was called or what it was for, as
mentioned above; and actually I still don't know what the damn thing
is for!). So now I texted her and asked if the Workers Daily was an
appropriate newspaper to "dengbao," and she impatiently replied no!,
she had already told me only newspapers municipal-level or higher
would work, and why was I wasting time? I replied that neither I nor
my driver had any idea which newspapers fit that category, or where
their offices were located, and this was the first one we happened to
find. Finally we managed to "dengbao" at the Chengdu Daily, lying that
I had lost my permit somewhere in Chengdu, and paying 120 yuan (it
would have cost as much as 500 yuan at any of the more popular
newspapers, so we were lucky to stumble upon this unpopular one). I
then gave the receipt to Mr. Yu, who turned out to be a kindly, thin,
grandfatherly type with a pointy nose and a propensity to tremble. He
said he wasn't mad at me, he was just worried I'd have to go to jail.
He took the dengbao receipt & my passport to the "experts office" and
begged for express service in getting a replacement permit due to the
extenuating circumstances, but was coldly rejected on the grounds that
they needed a copy of the newspaper itself.

So the next day I got a copy of the newspaper and accompanied Mr. Yu
to the experts office, where I was roundly scolded by a young,
arrogant-looking bureaucrat in a pink shirt, who reminded me that I
risked going to jail for my "crime." Mr. Yu pleaded that it was
precisely because of this risk that they should speed up the
procedure, but the bureaucrat coldly replied "that's his personal
problem" (zhe shi ta geren de wenti). The latter then addressed me in
English, asking why I would do such a thing, and I started to explain
but soon realized this was rhetorical question, so I just apologized
and said I wouldn't do it again. After all that, it turned out this
guy wasn't even qualified to grant the permit (so was he just playing
games with us or what?), that the appropriate person was out of the
office (even though we had come at the time they told us to the day
before), and that we should come back tomorrow at 4 PM. Tomorrow
happened to be July 30, the day my residence permit would expire, and
the PSB closed at 5:00, so Mr. Yu trembled and said let's make sure
and get there an hour early. If we didn't make it in time, I might be
arrested at 12:01 AM on July 31. So my girlfriend and I had our last
meal, drank lots of beer, and decided to start an international
campaign for my release if I were arrested.

At some point that evening Mr. Yu called and told me that tomorrow I
needed to bring my passport, two photos, and my residence registration
form (zhusu dengji biao). I'm almost certain this was the first time
he mentioned that form. I asked whether that was the form I filled out
at the local police station, he said yes it was, and I said, shit, I
had asked them if I needed a copy and they had said no, it would
enough for them to "put it online." He said I definitely needed a
printed copy with their stamp on it, and a fax wouldn't do, and
moreover, I had to go to police station and get it myself - no one
else could get it for me.

Here I should mention that my school is in a small town two or three
hours from downtown Chengdu by bus, or about an hour if you drive
directly during low-traffic times, and that night – possibly my last
night together with my girlfriend before incarceration – we were
staying at a hotel in downtown Chengdu, and it was too late to go back
to my school. Luckily I was able to arrange for a friend to pick me up
early the next morning (too early, after all that beer) and take me
back to the local police station, where we waited around for several
hours while the cops tried to figure out how to work the computer and
put the form online (even though we said we just needed a paper copy,
we didn't care whether they put it online, whatever that meant;
obviously they had not put it online Monday like they had said they
would – by now it was Wednesday).

There was a group of about ten Tibetans there at the police station,
sitting in the courtyard singing songs, apparently waiting for
something. I asked why they were there, but they didn't seem to
understand Chinese. One of the cops said they were just there to be
registered, like me.

The cops finally gave us a copy of the form and we went back to
Chengdu. On the way back, I noticed that the radio was flooded with
patriotic songs, including several new songs about the Olympics, which
were like 10 days away at that point. One had the English phrase "we
are ready" as the chorus, and one of the refrains was "this
nation(ality)/ is ready" (zhe ge minzu/ zhunbei hao le) – for the
Olympics, that is. Minzu could mean nation, in the sense of the
Chinese nation (including the Han Chinese majority minzu along w/ 55
minority minzu), but it could also mean nationality/ ethnic group, in
the sense of the Han versus Tibetans and other minority minzu, which
in conventional Chinese ethnology are regarded as less advanced than
the Han on the scale of progress with the "Western developed nations"
at the most advanced pole and sub-Saharan Africa at the other. After
having just encountered this Tibetan round-up at the police station, I
joked with my friend that this song seemed to mean that the Han have
advanced to a stage of development capable of hosting the Olympics
whereas the Tibetans and other minorities have not yet reached that
stage, and perhaps this explains why they're being kicked out of
Beijing (along with migrants from rural areas, who are also generally
believed to be less developed). But even taken in the evidently
intended sense – that the Chinese nation was ready to host the
Olympics, in relation to other nations (the French nation, the
Japanese nation, etc.) – the song evoked a Social Darwinist image of
competition among nation-states that I think plays a role in
justifying the draconian measures the government is using to "get
ready for the Olympics."

After sitting around nervously in a teahouse near the PSB for several
hours, Mr. Yu showed up at 3:30 with a shiny new foreign expert permit
in hand, and we managed to submit that along w/ all the other
"relevant materials" to the PSB before they closed. The stony-faced
PSB hack gave no indication whether my materials were complete or
filled out correctly, but she did give me a receipt and told me to
come back to get my new residence permit on Tuesday.

So it seems like there should be no further serious problems, but it
just occurred to me that there may have been no more blank pages left
in the passport. The Chinese government always uses one full page for
visas, another for residence permits, and yet another for entry and
exit stamps (whereas most other governments use only one of the four
squares on each page), so it doesn't take many years to completely
fill a passport book. Let's hope that's not the deciding factor to
land me in jail!

Finally, I would like to add that, while my girlfriend and I were
nervously awaiting my arrest the other night, my supervisor Mr. Huang
sent me the following text message in English:

"what you did these days really bring us so much troubles,a real
trouble_maker! we always hold the truth_Americans *re direct、highly
responsible & promise_keeper s,while you change it,we have to doubt
your personality & distrust our future cooperation. The dean_HuangYi."

I wrote back an attempt at explanation, to which he replied in a
series of three messages in Chinese accusing me of lying about
throwing my residence permit away and not having enough money to
change my flight, etc., then waiting until the last minute to return
to Chengdu and to tell Bettina that I had thrown my foreign expert
permit away. I find it amazing that he did not see a connection
between my first telling them that I had thrown away my residence
permit and my turning out to have actually thrown away my foreign
expert permit. Instead of connecting the dots (which should be obvious
if he read my messages to Bettina where I explained that I had
thought the red booklet I had thrown away was my residence permit, and
where I asked what it was and whether it was important, to which she
never responded), he just accused me of lying. I can think of no
precedent that would give him cause to regard me as a lier. As for
insinuating that I am not a "promise_keeper," this seems especially
ironic, since it is clearly he and Bettina who have reneged on
several promises, and I cannot think of any promise that I made to
them and later broke.

Speaking of promises, although Bettina never replied to my request
that the reimbursement for changing my ticket be paid as soon as I
arrive at the school, and that they provide me with a computer during
the summer, I expected these requests to be easily fulfilled, since
Bettina said she would wait for me at the school until I arrived. As
mentioned above, she didn't wait for me, and when I asked about the
money & the computer, she impatiently replied that the financial
affairs office was closed for the summer, so I couldn't be reimbursed
until next semester started, and the computer was locked up for the
summer. I reminded her that I needed a computer to work on, and that
if she couldn't provide this she should have told me before I left
home so I could have brought an old computer (I had seriously
considered bringing it just in case, but it was just so heavy and
would require some service to work properly). In response, Bettina
recommended that I borrow one from a friend. Luckily, I just happen to
have a key to an office with a computer. (She obviously forgot that
she gave me that key, or doesn't want me to use it, otherwise she
would have mentioned it.) That computer can't connect to the internet,
so I am going between that and a netbar. In theory this situation
should help increase my efficiency by decreasing the distraction of
web-surfing, so I should thank her.

As I was writing that yesterday, I felt my first earthquake. Someone
said it was reported as 6.1 in Mianyang, and that some people were
killed by it there, but I haven't checked the news to confirm that.
Here it was smaller and very brief – only about a second – and "small
shrimp" compared to the one on May 12, but still pretty scary to me. I
was writing on the computer in the office just mentioned, on the 6th
floor of a building still being noisily renovated from earlier
earthquake damage.

the rubber farmers' battle of menglian

huizhou riot

In Shangnan village on the outskirts of the (prosperous, export-processing) city of Huizhou, Guangdong, migrant workers from poor inland areas, who probably rent rooms from the villagers (most of the villagers probably living relatively comfortably from this rent & running local businesses, and so probably perceived by the migrants as class enemies, to some extent), exploded in anger when they found that one of their fellow migrants, who had worked as a motorcycle-taxi driver, was dead, apparently murdered by a village "security guard," apparently because the driver refused to pay a "protection fee" to the "security guard."

The reports don't say what these "security guards" are, what they guard, or how they are in a position to charge "protection fees" from migrants (who I'm only assuming to be tenants in this village). SCMP says they were "government-hired," but it's clear that what the reporter means by "government" is the village authorities (who are formally independent from the government, but who often function as extensions of the nearest township party committee). What do they guard? Maybe they function as police for the village (villages don't have formal police). Or maybe this village is more like a gated community for rich people, and the security guards are there to keep poor migrants from coming in to rob them.

Anyway, somewhere from "over 100" to several hundred migrants attacked the security guards and the village authorities' office, as well as the Yuanzhou township police station and nearby shops, brandishing knives and waterpipes, and turning over a police car. When the migrants tried to set fire the village authorities' office, about 300 villagers then attacked the migrants. The township police and riot police from Boluo county then came in to suppress the conflict. Netizens claim that three security guards were killed, but the state media hasn't reported any deaths on either side. 8 rioters were detained, among whom 7 were released, only the 25-year-old cousin of the deceased being kept under accusation of inciting to riot. Witnesses say that over 1,200 people were involved in all.

The best report I've seen is in today's SCMP, but you'll need to go through a subscribing library to access the online version. Google "huizhou police" for other reports, but mine's the best so far, i'm afraid. Let me know if you learn any more details or see any mistakes (the obvious way would be to search in Chinese, but i'll just wait for someone else to do that for me

nlr interview w/ shakya on tibetan protests

Was the issue of Tibetan nationalism the overriding one, or were some of the protests focused on economic or social issues?

People talked about many things, but if you look at the slogans and banners the protesters were carrying, there was no explicit demand for independence; I think the main issue was getting China to allow the Dalai Lama to come back to Tibet, as well as human rights. It’s true that the protests in Lhasa were against the Chinese government and the Party, but also against ordinary Chinese people who have settled in Tibet—Chinese shops were burnt, ethnic Chinese were beaten. But it was really only in Lhasa that this took place. In other regions the demonstrators rushed to government offices or Communist Party headquarters, taking down the Chinese flag and hoisting the Tibetan one, ransacking official buildings; there were very few attacks on ethnic Chinese. The reason they were the target of public anger in Lhasa and not elsewhere is that the disparity between the migrants’ success and the status of the indigenous is so glaringly obvious there—the Chinese own hotels, shops, restaurants, and are therefore much more visible. In rural areas, by contrast, the economic disparity between Tibetans and Chinese is minimal, so there was little resentment based on economic grievances. There are, of course, tensions between Tibetans and outsiders: in eastern Tibet, for example, farmers supplement their income in summer by collecting mushrooms, medicinal plants and yartsa-gunbu—the caterpillar fungus, much prized in traditional Chinese medicine. Now many Han migrants are also going into the hills to harvest these things, and though the government has tried to restrict this by charging them a fee, the profits are still large enough for them to continue. Locals object to what they see as the indiscriminate way the outsiders collect the mushrooms and fungus, claiming they are doing long-term damage to the pastures. This competition over resources has become more intense in recent years.

But personally I do not think the demonstrations were principally to do with economic disparities or disadvantages suffered by Tibetans. Rather, I think these were defensive protests, concerning questions of national identity. [...] The scale of Han immigration has also been a significant factor. Throughout their history, Tibetans on the Plateau have always lived in homogeneous communities, but this is no longer the case—they feel much more acutely than ever before that this land is no longer exclusively Tibetan terrain.

How would you characterize the political spectrum of the pro-Tibet movement outside China, and its relation to Western governments’ policies?

The participants in protests in the West are quite a diverse set of people—not necessarily Buddhists or Tibetophiles. Pro-Tibetans tend to come from traditional middle-class, left-of-centre or liberal groups; in the 1970s and 80s they might have been involved in solidarity with the anc, cnd, Greenpeace and so on. The human-rights organizations have also shifted their focus: in the 1970s and 80s, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch were more concerned with what was happening in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and China did not figure much in their reports. Now they have directed their attention more to China, and Tibet as an underplayed concern. But I would separate Western government policy from popular sentiment. Most Western governments are essentially very pro-China. This is mainly connected to economic questions: Beijing and the West are in broad agreement on matters such as developing market economies, privatization and the globalization of trade. Since these governments’ primary objective is to integrate China into the global economic order, the issues of human rights and Tibet are very much secondary for them.

By the same token, internet claims in the us and China that the Tibetan protests were engineered by Western ngos, funded by the us National Endowment for Democracy, are wide of the mark. There are Western-funded ngos in China—for example, the Trace Foundation, which supports health and education projects in Tibet—but the ccp obviously carries out rigorous security assessments of them. Trace is well known for distancing itself from any anti-government groups or activities, which is one of the reasons why it has been able to operate in the prc for decades. In fact it is often accused by pro-Tibetan lobbyists of being too supportive of China.

Tibetan exile groups in India do get ned funding, but that does not translate into an ability to mobilize in the prc. There is a huge social and cultural gap between Tibetans in India and those in the tar, illustrated even by their taste in music. Tibetans inside Tibet are comfortable with Chinese pop, while Tibetans in India prefer Bollywood. When Dadon, Tibet’s biggest pop star at the time, defected from Lhasa to India in 1995, she was shattered to find that there was no audience for her music. She was virtually unknown, and the exiles accused her of singing Chinese-style songs. Even when the two communities meet in the West, there is often little interaction between them. The exiles in India sometimes see themselves as the ‘true’ representatives of Tibetanness, and the Tibetans inside as merely passive, oppressed victims—a patronizing attitude that does not go down well in Tibet. The largest exile organization in India is the Tibetan Youth Congress, most of whom were born in India. They have thoroughly absorbed India’s long—and valiant—tradition of protest, and lead highly vocal demonstrations on the streets of Delhi, Paris and New York. But they have no means of projecting their words into actions inside Tibet itself. [...]

But the main outside influence on Tibetans is the Tibetan-language broadcasting on Voice of America since 1991, and Radio Free Asia since 1996. Again, it is not a question of clandestine organization; these services simply provide a source of news and ideas in a society where people are starved of alternatives. Because there is no independent news media, and people are automatically very suspicious of what they hear or read in government sources, they tend to turn to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia for their information. The two stations report on all the Dalai Lama’s trips abroad, and on the activities of the exiles in India, giving Tibetans quite international and politicized coverage; the stations are very popular in Tibet, which helps to create a certain climate of opinion there. The Chinese government tries to jam the signal, but people somehow manage to listen to them.

What is the current state of repression in the Tibet Autonomous Region?

At the moment the situation is very bad. Because of the number of people involved in the demonstrations, and because they cut across all classes, the government cannot target one particular group, such as the monasteries; it seems that they have to target everybody. The authorities are trying to exert control at every level of the community, in a way that reminds many people of the Cultural Revolution. It is not only those who have been detained that are subject to punishment—the government is holding meetings in primary and secondary schools, in colleges, government offices, where everyone has to write self-criticisms; so do Tibetan students at university in China. The Tibetan population as a whole is bearing the brunt of this campaign.

How would you characterize the recent wave of Chinese nationalist sentiment, in response to the Tibetan protests—would you say it marks a watershed in the mentality of the prc?

This is very interesting. The Chinese nationalism currently exhibited on the internet and abroad is essentially a middle-class phenomenon. It is strongly expressed by those who are the main beneficiaries of China’s economic success, and who are most conscious of the country’s global standing. They are also more exposed to what is happening outside. They feel that, for them, the reforms are going in the right direction; they are afraid of anything that will hamper China’s economic advance. But there is a great divide between coastal and inland areas in China. You do not find nationalism of this kind in the poorer provinces—in Gansu, Qinghai or other areas—where people have not benefited from the current policies. Then again, the terrible earthquake in Wenchuan on May 12 shattered the confidence in the Chinese state that many people had been expressing only weeks before. Simple questions are being raised about why school buildings collapsed but luxury hotels and private firms did not. There is much more discussion, new questions are being asked about China.

There is a debate among China scholars as to whether the upsurge of patriotic fervour that accompanied the Tibetan protests was engendered by the government, or whether it arose spontaneously from society. There are strong arguments on the side of those who claim it was engineered and manipulated by the government, since the state has evidently been involved. For example, any differing views posted in internet forums were almost immediately deleted, and people expressing them in chat rooms were shut out. Others argue that this nationalism arose not from within the prc, but from outside, among Chinese overseas students, and travelled into China from there. Certainly, many of those studying in Europe or North America are much more mindful of recent changes in the prc, and have clearly benefited from the reforms. They feel that the criticisms made are not accurate, and that Tibet has in some sense been used as a stick with which to beat China. They ask why protests in Tibet have got so much attention in the international media when similar protests happen every day in China, without being highlighted. There is some truth in this; but still, the geographical scale of the Tibetan protests is unprecedented.

I should also say that there is intense diversity within China—it is not as homogeneous as it might appear. Over three hundred intellectuals signed a petition circulated by Wang Lixiong criticizing the government’s response to the unrest in Tibet and appealing for dialogue. [1] There were similar articles appearing in a range of publications. A group of Chinese lawyers announced that they would go to defend the Tibetan detainees; these people are risking their livelihood—the government is threatening not to renew their licences. This is not what the media highlights, of course. Many of these dissenting voices were not heard amid the patriotic fervour.

If Tibetans could articulate them freely, what would their essential demands be?

One of the biggest grievances is that the Chinese authorities equate any expression of Tibetan identity with separatism. The government seems to think that if it allows any kind of cultural autonomy, it will escalate into demands for secession. This is something the government has to relax. In Tibet, everything from newspapers and magazines to music distribution is kept firmly under control, whereas all over China there are increasing numbers of independent publishing houses. The joke in Tibet is that the Dalai Lama wants ‘one country, two systems’, but what people there want is ‘one country, one system’—they want the more liberal policies that prevail in China also to apply in Tibet.

attacking the police - in china & elsewhere

In the past two weeks there have been three incidents reported about Han Chinese attacks on the police: the riot in Weng'an, Guizhou; the individual attack on a police station in Shanghai; and now the riot in Kanmen, Zhejiang. (Considering the delay in reporting about the last incident, the lack of details about all three, Beijing's heightened efforts to control its image at this time, and precedence about this sort of incident over the past few years, it seems likely that other incidents of this kind have occurred recently.) Like the Tibetan riots in March, these incidents are all "criminal acts of violence," "terrorism of the highest order".

The best collection of info on Weng'an riot I've seen is Roland's, including photos & links to videos. Here is the first in the series of videos on Youtube:

Here are some of the photos:

Today the local state media announced that authorities have arrested 100 people & blamed the riot on gangs, still denying the claims that they had covered up the rape & murder of a girl, which had sparked the riot. According to AP, against this official claim that the riot was stimulated by gangs, "Locals have insisted that most of the rioting was done by middle school classmates of the dead girl, who had accused police of covering up her rape and murder by the son of a local official." However, according to local state media via Reuters, "Forensic experts have conducted three autopsies on the 16-year-old victim, Li Shufen, and have repeatedly ruled out the possibility of sexual assault or murder, saying she died by drowning." Instead (according to an earlier report), the provincial authorities are blaming local officials for creating a volatile atmosphere by their involvement with gangs as well as mishandling "public tensions over mining development, housingdemolitions and resident resettlement, Xinhua reported."

There has been little reporting on the Shanghai incident. The best report/ commentary I've seen is this. Today Xinhua released some more information about the suspect, but still nothing about his own explanation (they had briefly mentioned his explanation before but then removed it, saying that it was "inappropriate" to publish the suspect's point of view, according to Danwei).

I have seen no pictures or videos of the Kanmen incident either, although according to the reports hundreds of people were involved and it lasted for three days. I haven't found much searching in Chinese either (and shouldn't be spending much time on this now anyway - hopefully Roland, CDT, or someone will do that for me :) Apparently it's been covered up pretty well, considering it was only just reported in both Chinese & Western media four days after the riot began & a day after it was suppressed. The best report I've seen is this.

Incidentally, Tibetans & Hans are not the only people rioting lately. The past few weeks have also seen violent protests in India, Mongolia and Japan (in addition to the largely peaceful G8 protest, where 21,000 police outnumbered an terrorized an estimated 3,000 protesters), a prisoners' rebellion in Ireland, and a police mutiny in Nepal, not to mention the numerous food-related protests and riots around the world that preceded these for several months.

Such reports, "when viewed individually, may appear at first glance to be irrational actions, or simply isolated events. When viewed as a whole, they point to large areas of discontent and general patterns of activity..."