Catherine Sampson, Falling Off Air, Out of Mind, The Pool of Unease, Robin Ballantyne, China crime fiction, Beijing expatriates

A Celebration with Communist Characteristics

On Monday, I was sitting at my computer when I suddenly heard a sound that I knew didn't fit here. It wasn't the lorries on the road outside or the drills and hammering of local construction work. It was.... the screamof fighter jets. In general, we don't hear any planes here. Nothing is allowed to fly over the city except for the very occasional police or military helicopter or.... as on Monday, the fighter jets practising flying wingtip to wingtip for their role in the vast military parade planned for October 1st, the 60th anniversary of Communist rule of China. Beijing residents may well crane their heads up towards the sky that day, because the aerial display may be all that they see of the parade. So scared is the Communist Party of its own people that they are banned from the route and will be kept away by force.The safe place to watch will be on the sofa, in front of the television set. On the tv, there will be all manner of military hardware, plenty of goose-stepping soldiers, and uplifting commentary. Planes will be banned from landing at the civilian airport for a period of three hours, police are already stationed throughout the city, dissidents are being rounded up. The problem regions of Tibet and Xinjiang will be held in an iron grip of 'harmony and stability,' and all bad news suppressed. It's unlikely that anyone will sneeze, let alone die of swine flu until at least October 2nd. Already for weeks internet access has been severely restricted. So.... celebration? Well, let's just say it's a day when the Communist Party doesn't have to pretend and try to be something it's not. This isn't the Olympics, for heaven's sake. On this occasion, it can just be itself.

23 September 2009 | 2:49:17 AM |

The Twentieth Anniversary of a Massacre

Tiananmen

It was a very long time ago. Twenty years ago today. I won’t go on at length but it deserves to be remembered. Even more so because here it remains taboo.

We are supposed to think that things have moved on. And of course economically, they have. But how can the present party leadership pretend the massacre had nothing to do with them, if they still hold it so closely to their breast and cradle it, protecting it from the scrutiny of their own citizens?

It upsets me when, on occasion, I hear Chinese talk about the massacre of June 4^th and make excuses for their government. True, the students were naive, true they didn’t entirely know what it was they wanted. Yes, they were blocking traffic. Yes, they were embarrassing their government. But honestly, none of those is an excuse for opening fire and killing hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed demonstrators.

I was writing for The Times in 1989, a twenty-six year old very new to daily journalism. Ever since April I had been covering the student demonstrations. It was exhausting and exhilarating. Because of the time difference, I was often up all night writing for the latest edition of the newspaper. During the day, I would be moving around the town, speaking to demonstrators on Tiananmen Square or in the universities, or on the marches. It was a time when few of those involved were terribly objective. Not the marchers, not foreign journalists, not Chinese journalists, not Chinese police, and most importantly, not Chinese party officials – we later learned of the cavernous split that developed between those who were willing to listen to the students’ calls for more responsive government, and those who were terrified of them.

In all my time covering the demonstrations, I largely encountered huge cheerfulness and enthusiasm. Only once, on the day before the army was sent in, was there evidence that I saw of a fight, and blood drawn, outside the party compound at Zhongnanhai. Were protesters to blame? Were agent provocateurs involved? Outside of Beijing there were riots. But inBeijing itself, there was little violence.

When the party leadership ordered the army in to crush the demonstrations, I was on the balcony of a fourteenth floor room in the Beijing Hotel overlooking Chang’An Avenue. I remember being awed and appalled as an armoured personnel carrier raced down the avenue – I hadn’t realised something that looked like a tank could move so fast. I wouldn’t have believed that this lumbering creature could clamber over buses that had been left blocking the road, leaving them in pieces.

As the night drew on and the shooting began in earnest, I remember seeing red trails jumping into the sky opposite, not realising they were tracer bullets. There were deep explosions – I still don’t know what they were. Later we would learn that people inside apartments in the west of Beijing on the 14^th and 15^th floors had been killed by bullets sent high into the surrounding buildings. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that I was in any danger, until a bullet hit the balcony. After the authorities turned out the lights on Tiananmen Square I remember sitting curled up on that balcony waiting miserably for morning to come, because I thought it would all seem better then. It didn’t, not immediately. For days there was random shooting all over the city. I was terrified, not at all brave or heroic. I had too vivid an imagination to be a war correspondent. That memory of my own fear always returns to me now when I hear of civilians caught in war zones. I was lucky, it lasted a few days, and I was soon in the relative safety of my own flat. Then, not long afterwards, and entirely surreal, on holiday in Bali. But in Beijing the massacre was the start point of a hellish purge, and a hounding of dissidents, mass round ups and imprisonments that dragged on for months.

To say that things have changed twenty years on is of course an understatement. But perhaps not as much as you’d think. Capitalism has largely eaten up the failing state industries. China’s cities are bursting with entrepreneurial energy and skyscrapers. Dissent as we knew it- university based, fuelled by academics - is largely inactive. And yet... anti-government protest exists in new and equally energetic forms – where once there were student activists, now there are ‘Rights Defender’ lawyers who do most of their work outside the big cities. They use the law to defend clients, often poor and powerless, against corruption and abuse by the powerful. They are as brave as ever the students were, perhaps less naive, more focused. They are involved less in revolution than in evolution.

Where once the state had control of the press, now all manner of opinion populates the blogosphere. But the fist of the state is never far away, as many in jail can attest. They crossed the line.

Meanwhile, the corruption and the cruelty of power unchecked carries on. It wouldn’t matter at this point even if Beijing had enlightened, modern leaders at the top ( in fact there is scant evidence of any enlightenment – in the 21^st century, party leaders are less adventurous and accessible than they were in the days of the early 80s), at the lowest level there is vast human suffering.

If British readers think of the dubious dealings of some of their own politicians, if they think of the ‘flipping’ that earned some MPs thousands of pounds every year, they must then multiply that betrayal by thousands to get any idea of the magnitude of the corruption in a party which has been unchecked by democratic competition or by a free press for sixty years.

Throughout the country, there are thuggish police forces and a brutal justice system that have been formed by sixty years of Communist rule and which the party still relies on. I suspect that this is where the new fractures will start to show.

04 June 2009 | 3:27:46 AM |

A Fearful Inheritance

A few weeks ago, I sat in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the south of Beijing talking to Mao Hengfeng, her husband, Wu Xuewei, and one of their three daughters. A small woman with a pretty face and long black hair, Mao Hengfeng is immensely tough. Sitting there in KFC, she showed me the scars from her latest beating at the hands of the police, and described how they had taunted her.

I was writing a fictional story set in a Chinese jail, and I wanted to hear from her what it was like to be held in a woman’s jail. Mao wasn’t much interested in discussing prison conditions in general. Her own battle with the authorities has been raging for dedecades. That, and the battles of fellow petitioners who Mao supports, are totally absorbing not just for her, but for her family. She speaks rapidly, with few pauses, pouring out information about her own biography, and about the current situations of other dissidents.

Born in 1961, her first confrontation with the authorities came when she became pregnant again after having twins. She was told to have an abortion, and when she wouldn't, she was detained in a psychiatric hospital. She gave birth to her third daughter in 1989. When she became pregnant again, she was threatened with the loss of her job. Eventually she had an abortion, thinking the decision would save her family from further harrassment. She was fired anyway. From 1990 to 2004 she repeatedly petitioned against dismissal, forced abortion and denial of freedom of expression.

From 2004 to 2005, she was detained in a labour camp under the Re-Education through Labour programme, which is fast track imprisonment requiring no trial.

In early 2006, she was detained in a guest house in a round-up of dissidents. She broke two lamps. In early 2007, she was sentenced for ‘willful destruction of property’ to be detained in Shanghai Women’s Prison until November 2008, when she was released at the end of her sentence. She has given detailed and horrifying accounts of her treatment in jail to human rights organisations. She spent seventy days in solitary confinement because of her refusal to admit her 'crime'.

Refusing to keep quiet, she came to Beijing to protest at her treatment, only to be detained and beaten again. Sent back home, she bounced back to Beijing again, which is when we met in KFC.

Her husband has been beaten and harassed too, but they show no signs of letting up. Their battle is the fire in their bellies.

I turned to their daughter, a quiet-spoken young woman who has been denied many years of schooling because of her mother’s repeated confrontations with the authority. ‘Aren’t you scared?’ I asked her.

‘I am,’ she said slowly, ‘but there are some things you just have to do.’

Her parents told me about how their daughters had been harassed and interrogated when they were younger, and how terrified they had been. But none of this seemed to touch the parents' determination to continue.

‘She’s like her mother,’ the father said proudly of his daughter. ‘She’s her mother’s successor.’

I glanced at the daughter and the mother, taken aback by the strange nature of his paternal ambition. The daughter looked calmly at the tabletop. If she felt otherwise, she didn't say so.

A few weeks ago, hundreds of angry protesters gathered at Beijing University after Sun Dong Dong, a law professor, was quoted in the press as saying that 99% of long-term petitioners were mentally ill.

That designation, long term petitioners, includes many people like Mao. What she does – the repeated journeying to Beijing to plead in vain for redress from government departments – is exactly repeat petitioning.

The protesters outside Beijing University were rapidly dispersed, of course. Petitioning the rulers in Beijing for justice is a tradition that extends back to imperial China. These days, the Party pays lip service to the practice, pretending that it is a useful link with the populace. In fact, in all my years in China, I have hardly ever heard of a grievance righted by the authorities as a result of petitioning. Far more often one hears of petitioners dispersed or detained in the kind of detention centre where Mao was last beaten up. Or they may be thrown into mental institutions. At best they are simply ignored while they spend the last of their savings on train tickets and the last of their energies on appeals.

I thought, after I had met Mao Hengfeng, that the choices she was making were not the choices that you or I might imagine that we would make in her situation. Logically, is there not a point where you simply decide to stop fighting? It makes no sense, after all, because you’re never going to win. And your family suffers. Wouldn’t it be better to cut your losses and salvage what normal life you can? After all, for many people in China these days there is a high level of what even those who grew up in the West would recognize as normality – better incomes, freedom to choose your own job, your children’s school, freedom to move around the country and to go abroad. Protesting – when all you’re likely to get for your efforts is a scar or a bruise or worse – doesn’t make sense.

So then does continuing to protest mean that you are mentally ill? It is an Orwellian concept, that persistent protest is proof of madness. And China, with its economic freedoms, sometimes seems to have left Orwell on the shelf. But there are many cases of those who protest being detained in psychiatric institutions.

For Mao Hengfeng’s family, their struggle fuels and defines them, and there are many like them, determined to achieve what they believe is justice even though they know only grief lies ahead. It may not be logical in our eyes, but perhaps if we were in their shoes then we would understand that sometimes there actually is no sensible course to take.

The best discussion of this that I have read is a New Yorker article by a Chinese woman who visits her brother in a Chinese jail and who struggles to understand why her brother has chosen to become a dissident, and to spend years of his life as a prisoner. Both brother and sister seem to conclude, that someone has to be the dissident, and that that to those who risk their freedom to protest, dissent is a vocation. Read the article here.

08 May 2009 | 3:50:29 PM |

Maoists Revived

You may have already read about this in The Economist, but James and I spent a surreal Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago in a Maoist seminar. Yes, Maoist. If people in western democracies are a little querulous now about the superiority of the capitalist system, China's Maoists are emerging, dancing, from the woodwork. The seminar took place in the offices of the Mao Flag website. There is a vast poster of Chairman Mao spread across the front of the room (if you look at the picture below, you can just see him) and a gold bust of Mao on the windowledge. And the bookshelves are stacked with the works of.... well it's not Ben Bernanke. The office is an anonymous hotel room in a fairly grotty hotel in central Beijing, and two hundred people or so packed into it that afternoon. (A handful of police were smoking cigarettes in the lobby downstairs, but it's not clear whether or not they were there to keep an eye on things - another far left meeting on the same day had been cancelled by the authorities.) When James and I arrived, there was a murmur of 'laile', which in this case probably translated as 'the foreigners are here'. But they were the most polite bunch of anti-imperialists I have ever met, insisting that I sat down, and making space for James to perch on a desk. When a very elderly gentleman eventually left, he insisted that James take his chair.

The speaker, a charismatic Mao-lookalike with the glint of obsession in his eyes, raged against western imperialism and capitalism. The audience, which ranged in age from student to the elderly, did not look entirely convinced. But they were interested. The speaker predicted a cataclysmic struggle between pro-democracy rightists and leftists like himself. That's a long way off, but that the meeting happened at all, and that the room was full to sweaty, dizzy bursting point, and that similar meetings have been forbidden, all says to me that the economic crisis means that debate and disagreement are rife.

29 March 2009 | 5:53:56 AM |

Evil Germs

Another poster from my favourite park. This one one how to avoid contracting tuberculosis, and how to cure it if you get it. I love the evil germ, the ghostly tb sufferers, and the cheerful child imprisoned in the X-ray machine.

Oh, and here's my local park which I pace whilst seeking inspiration:

29 March 2009 | 5:05:26 AM |

In Case of Sudden Incidents

Out for a walk in our local park, Si De, I came across this poster.

It's aimed at educating the public in what to do if there is a 'sudden incident' - which means anything from a fire to a snowstorm to a riot to a public health emergency. This picture, below, illustrates an instruction to those in charge of media and internet reports to make sure their reports are accurate, objective, and true.

This text urges the rapid and accurate reporting of sudden incidents to higher level authorities, but urges again and again that reports must take account of state secrecy laws and respect them. It also instructs that in cases of important meetings or events, lowever level officials must make daily reports to higher levels.

The text above is attached to a nice illustration labelled 'watermelon festival', and shows low level officials making their daily report to higher level officials. The official is reporting 'Everything is normal here. What are your instructions?'

04 March 2009 | 3:14:26 AM |

Oasis

My son is feeling very glum. We had tickets for an Oasis concert in early April, but it's been cancelled. The reasons for the cancellation remain unclear. According to Oasis, the Chinese authorities suddenly realised that Noel Gallagher had taken part in a pro-Tibet concert in 1997. But the Chinese organiser says it was cancelled for 'economic reasons'.

I've lost count of the number of times we've bought tickets for concerts that have been cancelled at the last minute, or that we've tried to buy tickets for advertised concerts only to find them cancelled. Around the time of the Olympics a whole bunch of concerts were advertised in official publications. Not only did the concerts not take place, some of them had never been booked, according to the performers' agents.

The authorities are very nervous about mass gatherings that might get out of hand, very nervous ever since Bjork shouted 'Free Tibet' from a stage here, very nervous about everything right now. Last year held huge challenges, the year ahead looks even more rocky for the leadership as it treads its fragile tightrope.

04 March 2009 | 2:44:44 AM |

Hide and Seek

Now this is very strange. A man named Li Qiaoming has died of head wounds in police custody. The official cause of his death? He was playing hide and seek, and ran blindfold into a wall.

Yes, your reaction is much the same as that of China's netizens, who are now sending the phrase 'hide and seek' zinging around the blogosphere with a great helping of salt. Interesting how it's not just cynical foreigners who immediately assume police brutality. More on that soon when I tell you about a conversation I had recently with a woman who knows a thing or two about police brutality.

Now China's Communist Party goes great lengths to censor dissent on the web. But in this case the local propaganda chief is taking a different approach, inviting netizens to get involved in the investigation. Read more here . It's not clear what the propaganda chief means - are China's bloggers welcome to do a CSI type forensic analysis inside the jail? I think not. Indeed, he may backtrack rapidly.

Nevertheless, it's just one more indication that the Communist Party knows it's got to keep the goodwill of the population, it can't just rule by fiat.

20 February 2009 | 12:49:56 PM |

Wedding Photos

A couple walks through Chaoyang Park for a chilly morning of taking wedding shots. These photos are not taken on the wedding day itself, and the clothes are usually hired for the occasion from the photographic studio. At the wedding dinner, it is traditional for the bride to wear a red cheongsam.

20 February 2009 | 2:44:15 AM |

Undignified Exits

Here is a very interesting piece by the Telegraph's correspondent in Shanghai, Malcolm Moore, about the undignified exits that some foreign entrepreneurs are making from Shanghai. His evidenceis anecdotal, but that's how it is at the moment. This morning Ispoke to a taxi driver I have chatted with before. Just a couple of weeks ago he was still very gung-ho about the economy here - now not so much. No one dares to invest in anything he says. Everyone is watching and waiting. Tonight there are fireworks again for the Lantern Festival. Anecdotally - of course - sales of fireworks have dropped this year. They are, after all, the ultimate in discretionary spending.

08 February 2009 | 1:14:13 PM |

Never Mind the Shoe...

...it's the unemployment statistics that count (and, most importantly, the potential fallout in terms of social unrest). As the FT reports here, there are twenty million rural migrants who are now unemployed after their export-oriented manufacturing jobs vanished in the global crisis.

When he wasn't dodging shoes, Wen Jiabao visiting London echoed Gordon Brown and others in blaming the international crisis on untramelled greed in the boardrooms of banks in the West. They're both right, of course. But just as we all know Gordon Brown is also trying to deflect whatever blame he may bear, so Wen Jiabao also has a domestic agenda. There is a small but significant danger that those who are unemployed, or whose businesses go bust, may turn against the Communist leadership. It would make sense for Wen Jiabao to turn that anger outwards towards the western world. And - given the situation - it would be easy and logical. He must, however, be aware that dangers lie in that direction too.

Meanwhile, the government has launched a new scheme to sell electrical goods to the vast, but poor, rural population. It's a policy that raises questions about joined-up thinking. How will a newly unemployed rural labourer afford the flat-screen tv? Until you realise that this is just another variation of the policy of governments worldwide. Never mind that you no longer have any savings, just spend!

03 February 2009 | 1:00:40 AM |

comments (5)

Charter 08 - Still Kicking

Charter 08, a radical call by 300 intellectuals for an end to one party rule was widely expected to die a quiet death. Instead, it seems to be taking on a life of it's own. Read this article in the Washington Post about the kinds of people who are adding their names... Eight thousand people is still a drop in the ocean in a country of a billion, but if it is so insignificant, then why does the Communist Party want to ban all mention of it from the internet?

I first wrote about Charter 08 for The Guardian 's online Comment is Free site here, and received a rather rude response on a state-run website.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the economic crisis for Comment is Free. The economic slowdown is already hitting China, although we don't yet know how hard. But the leadership will be watching not only how many people lose their jobs, but how those people react. Beijing has kept the population happy with an economic boom and rising living standards. That's about to falter.

30 January 2009 | 4:43:07 AM |

CCTV's Twitchy Fingers

The excellent Danwei.org links to the China Central Television live coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address...

Just moments after Obama said that the US had stood up to both fascism and communism, the station abruptly broke away from the speech and a rather surprised looking announcer appeared to have to wake an analyst up to comment on an entirely unrelated point.

So, a censor poised, with twitchy fingers at the China Central Television headquarters with a long list of red alert words like 'communism'? It must have been a difficult list to write - 'freedom' and 'democracy' must have been contenders. But then you might as well not have bothered.

But what surprises me is that they were running the speech live at all - it inevitably means that any censorship is a few seconds too late. In this case, for instance, everyone watching knows that Barack Obama said that the US had stood up to communism. And - worse - knows that CCTV then attempted a somewhat awkward censorship of what came next. I would have expected them to run the speech with a slight delay - which is often what is done even in so-called live broadcasting here - so that they cut away before the 'c' word and had time to give the analyst a wake-up call.

22 January 2009 | 6:28:11 AM |

New Year Murder Roundup

People often ask me how I do research. We subscribe to the excellent Hong Kong newspaper the South China Morning Post . Over the festive season we've let them pile up. In an effort to clear a path to the sofa, I've just had a quick clipping session, paying particular attention to the section that picks up stories from local news around China. Here are some of the grimmer stories I've put away in my files for future reference.

In Yunnan, police have arrested a teacher on suspicion of killing and dismembering a thirteen year old student. Eight other female students are thought to be missing.

In Fujian, a 55-year old teacher has been sentenced to death for raping and killing a seventeen year old student.

A man has been arrested for killing two colleagues and stealing money donated for Sichuan earthquake relief. He said he needed the money to help his girlfriend who'd been forced into prostitution.

In Heilongjiang a seventeen year old girl and her boyfriend have been arrested for robbing and killing the girl's cousin. The girl claimed she was penniless after paying for an abortion.

A 31-year old woman has been sentenced to jail for 11 years for killing her husband's mistress. The court imposed a light sentence because 128 people had signed a petition pleading for leniency.

A man found wandering the streets of Huadian was found to be carrying his wife's head after an argument.

A student slit the throat of his professor in front of a class at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. He has said it was an act of revenge after discovering his girlfriend was having an affair with the professor.

15 January 2009 | 7:35:55 AM |

Amazing Magic Democratic Underpants

Well into New Year 2009 Liu Xiaobo is still in detention for his part in Charter 2008, the petition signed late last year by many Chinese intellectuals calling for sweeping democratic change in China. According to this, the Chinese government is trying to suppress all discussion of the charter. I wrote about the charter for The Guardian - you can read that piece here - and was surprised to see a reply on an official Chinese government-run site. I have to say that I'm a little touchy about any reference to my backside, but in the interests of democratic debate I'm prepared, just this once, to turn the other cheek...

12 January 2009 | 5:37:49 AM |

Naked Lunch

I was recently interviewed by Sarah Passmore for her Naked Lunch series at RTHK in Hong Kong. We talked about The Slaughter Pavilion, about writing crime fiction, and about China. You can hear the full interview here: http://www.rthk.org.hk/rthk/radio3/naked_lunch/20081107.html

Meanwhile, I'm back in Beijing, fresh - actually the opposite of fresh - off the plane after a family Christmas and New Year in Britain. Beijing is freezing cold, but the rabbit has survived (although in the worst of the weather he apparently refused to leave his nicely insulated hutch). Already I have heard, anecdotally from friends and acquaintances about the way the economic crisis is beginning to hit here too - plunging rental returns on property, and expatriate businessmen and women being recalled by their companies. This new year may turn out to be as challenging for China as last year.

04 January 2009 | 7:50:15 PM |

My Christmas Present List

The Slaughter Pavilion has had some great press reviews - another one from Joan Smith in the Sunday Times last week.

But if anyone has read and enjoyed The Slaughter Pavilion I'd be deeply grateful if you might consider writing a brief reader review for www.Amazon.co.uk .

I've done most of my Christmas shopping online - partly because spending pounds in China is now an immensely expensive business. And partly because most of my time between now and Christmas Day is going to be spent travelling. Anyway, I find, as I shop on Amazon, that I really pay attenting to star ratings, and to reader or user reviews.

One of the problems, with selling hardbacks, is that many bookshops choose not to stock them, and to wait for the paperback. So even as nice reviews appear in the press, buyers don't necessarily see them on the bookshelves in their local Borders or Waterstones. Very frustrating. So Amazon is important. Incidentally, if anyone has news of a bookshop sighting of The Slaughter Pavilion, or has had trouble finding a copy, I'd really like to hear about it. Please do email me to let me know at catherine@catherinesampson.com Thank you!

17 December 2008 | 9:15:24 PM |

Charter 08

Charter 08 was published on the internet this week to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the International Charter of Human Rights. It's an extraordinary document - it calls for an end to one party rule, free elections, an end to Communist Party influence in the military and in the courts. Some 303 Chinese intellectuals, lawyers and officials signed it at great risk to their own freedom. Many of them are now being investigated, and Liu Xiaobo, who is a veteran activist from 1989 is in police custody. You can read the Charter here

Of course I can't, because I live in Beijing, and the website is blocked.

11 December 2008 | 3:37:08 PM |

comments (3)

The Strange Case of Yang Jia

Earlier this year, Yang Jia murdered six police officers in Shanghai. Last week he was executed by lethal injection. Strangely, before he died, many people in China expressed support for him. I wrote about the case for The Guardian's online Comment is Free section, and you can find my blog here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/28/china-police

03 December 2008 | 12:29:17 PM |

In Case of Dispute - Do Nothing

I’ve decided I’m going to blog more about crime in China. When I talk about my crime novels to groups of people in Beijing or back in England, I often get asked, ‘Do you feel safe if you’re out on your own at night in Beijing?’ and of course the answer, by and large, is yes. Not only yes, but safer than I’d feel in the city centre of most British towns on my own late at night. But there is crime here, plenty of it, and although it may be different from British or American crime and although it’s not much reported, it’s just as interesting, and very revealing about all manner of social and political issues.

Just to pluck a crime pretty much at random. This is a story picked up by the South China Morning Post on December 1^st:

Boss Illegally Imprisons Employee

A man was illegally imprisoned by his employer for eight days in Baoding, but city police refused to help and told his wife to seek help from their home country police, Hinews.cn reports. A Baoding police station chief said they had seen the man in the employer’s home but did not rescue him because they thought it was just a dispute. The employer threatened to torture the woman’s husband if she did not pay him.

It’s that phrase ‘it was just a dispute’, which is interesting to me. It reminds me of the day that our neighbour was besieged in his house for several hours by a gang of builders. He had hired them to renovate his house, and then fired them when he was dissatisfied with their work, but the builders said they were owed cash, and effectively kept him hostage in his own home, bashing on his gate with an iron bar, yelling, and throwing trash into his garden. The police arrived…. and did nothing. When I asked the officers why they weren’t taking action to disperse the angry crowd, they replied: ‘because it’s an economic dispute, and it’s not our job to intervene in an economic dispute.’ The fact that the gang was keeping our neighbour inside his house against his will seemed to be irrelevant, just as it did in the Baoding case. Presumably, if the employer had carried out his threat to torture the woman’s husband, it might then have become a police matter. But by then, of course, it would be too late. Does anyone know whether this police reluctance to get involved in economic disputes has any basis in law? And if it does, then who IS supposed to police economic disputes when they turn into hostage-taking? Because from what I hear, economic disputes do have a tendency to turn into kidnappings…

03 December 2008 | 1:03:07 AM |

If You Have a Cockroach in the Family

I love this poster in the lobby of the block where I have an office. In the lift last week was a notice in English advising residents to call the management 'if you have a cockroach in the family.'

28 November 2008 | 11:41:46 AM |

comments (3)

Disappearing Bodyguards

Some time ago, I blogged about our wealthy Chinese neighbours, whose stretch Mercedes and phalanx of bodyguards fasincated everyone else in the compound where we live. Recently I saw the baby of the house going trick or treating accompanied both by his nanny and by a bodyguard. But there's been a big change. The house is dark, apparently abandoned. No nanny, no child, no Stretch Mercedes sweeping through the compound..Most obviously, no miniature army of bodyguards. Our neighbour - let's call him Mr Huang - along with his brother, another Mr Huang - heads a Chinese retail company with branches all over the country. Both brothers have reportedly been detained by the police and are being questioned about stock manipulation. I miss the bodyguards, who have in the past gone to great lengths to helped us to catch our errant pet rabbit, Dusty, chasing him through the undergrowth of an overgrown abandoned garden.

Here's my original post:

Who's Moving In?

We live in a residential development which was originally built to house expatriates but which has now become home to many wealthy Chinese. We had a famous Chinese pop singer here for a while, and rumours of an actress. Mysteriously, several residents have cars with numberplates belonging to the People’s Armed Police. I say mysteriously, because in China public servants don’t earn the kind of salaries that can pay the mortgage or the rent on a house. So quite what the People’s Armed Police are doing here isn’t entirely clear.

Recently, another mystery has been playing itself out in front of our eyes. Directly opposite our house is a large house that for the past several months has undergone huge renovations. The place has been gutted and rebuilt bigger than ever, windows smashed and replaced, gardens landscaped…still, no sign of a new occupier.

Until this week, that is, when every evening, from about 9 pm onwards, a team of well-dressed young men and women has been busily readying the house for its new occupant, aided by uniformed maids with dusters. Their efforts have taken place in brightly lit rooms with large windows, and we’ve had no option but to observe their labours playing like a film on a big screen. We’re not the only ones who’ve been watching – the compound employs security guards, and several of these have abandoned their patrols to come and stand outside gazing as crystal chandeliers have been polished, remote-control curtains tested, pictures hung and pot plants trimmed.

Two nights ago, at one thirty in the morning, a stretch Mercedes was parked outside the house. A van arrived, and from it were brought box after box. These were delivered to the team in the house, who unpacked items from the boxes and then sent the empty boxes back out to be chucked over the wall of the empty house next door.

Next morning, I looked out the window to see two security guards rummaging among the empty boxes, looking to see whether there was anything worth salvaging. One of them found two silver tiaras decorated with pink fronds. He removed his beret and replaced it with the tiara so that the pink fronds hung coquettishly over his eyes. Both guards fell around laughing for a few moments. Then the guard replaced his beret, and they walked off, tiaras in hand, well-pleased by their find.

Since then we’ve seen the new occupier fleetingly, sitting in a leather armchair at a computer, and surrounded by men who seem to be bodyguards as he gets in and out of his stretch Mercedes. He’s a dapper Chinese man in his forties, I’d say, who wears dark suits with a yellow silk tie, and he has a wife and a young child. I’ve started my enquiries into who our new neighbour might be, but can’t tell you yet. We just hope he continues to live his glamorous life in bright light, and with the curtains wide open.

26 November 2008 | 8:06:35 AM |

comments (4)

China's Hawaii

We've spent the past week in Hainan, an island off the south coast of China, at Yalong Bay in Sanya. It's advertised as China's Hawaii. And as you can see, it's very pretty, with golden beach and blue sea and surf (and even a Chinese tourist in a Hawaiian suit.)

I first went to Sanya nearly twenty years ago, when there was nothing but beach and surf, and not a hotel in sight, but you could see the potential even then. The natural beach is really amazing. Now the whole bay has been developed so it is lined with Marriotts and Sheratons and Ritz Carltons and Crowne Plazas. The Chinese military - not to be outdone - has also developed the area just around the corner with a big naval base, so destroyers can be spotted sailing to and fro across the shining sea. When James and Alistair went kayaking, they were warned to stay well away from the military base, because it was 'very dangerous'.

For some reason that I can't work out, it's a destination very popular with Russian tourists.

In the week that we were there, the taxi drivers went on strike, as they did in two other cities (and have done elsewhere since.) They complained that they had to pay exorbitant fees to the authorities, while the same authorities failed to take action against unlicensed cabs that stole their business. Some of the protesters called for the setting up of an independent taxi drivers' union.

Update: Since my return to Beijing, I've talked to local taxi drivers here, who have similar complaints. They are aware that the protests elsewhere in the country are being met with some concessions, and also with arrests. They also know that the authorities are far more worried about protests in the capital than anywhere else. One of their biggest complaints is the price of petrol - they know perfectly well that the price of oil has dropped. So why haven't prices dropped at the pumps?

15 November 2008 | 10:44:01 AM |

Democracy

From my outpost in Hong Kong I’m watching history unfold.

I spent two years living in the States. Today a majority of Americans have voted to reclaim the best of what I saw there – passion, energy, generosity, vision. They’ve voted to do more than correct the vicious extremism of the Bush-Cheney years, they’ve taken a historic step that no one could have predicted, expanding and strengthening their democracy and voting for social inclusion and justice. Given the reality of American power, this is an event which spells hope for all of us. But – and this is the history - black people, men and women, have been leaving the polls in tears. Obama has given a voice to the millions who felt that they were disenfranchised.

Which of course brings me to China. When China has, for years, been the biggest economic success story in the world, and when the standards of living for many Chinese are improving, when polling suggests that a vast majority of people are optimistic, why do people like me harp on about political reform? What’s wrong with a dictatorship, as long as it responds – as this one increasingly does – to popular grievance?

Well, step back a bit and you see that China is going through its own extremist swing towards a ruthless capitalism that could be termed devil take the hindmost. Certainly the central government is trying to address issues like healthcare because they understand that it is potentially explosive, but the statistics are absolutely dire. One article in a state-run newspaper last week suggested that only 10% of cases of childhood leukaemia can be treated, because the vast majority of parents cannot afford to pay even to attempt to save their child. This in a country which owns much of America’s debt, which has an active space programme, and which is on paper committed social justice. America’s record on healthcare is atrocious, but there’s no Medicare here.

Step back a bit further, and you see that China’s history since 1949 has been a series of swings – some of which, like the extreme leftist Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution, have left millions dead. The present swing to a corrupt right will leave its own death toll. From a purely pragmatic point of view, democracy, with the constant challenge of an active opposition, the pressure to find consensus, along with the necessary accompaniment of a free press and independent courts seems to me to represent the best (but never perfect) corrective to extremism.

Beyond this, I believe that political impotence is potentially toxic. Today what we are frequently seeing in China is that the disenfranchised are driven to extreme measures. Often these are self-destructive – the suicide rate is high. Sometimes they are vengeful. Recently, a man called Yang Jia murdered six police officers in Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, he has been sentenced to death. What has been astounding has been the outpouring of displeasure on the internet about the sentence. It seems that he was beaten up by the police and, unable to get anyone to listen to his complaint, he turned to murder. The revenge of course was totally out of all proportion to the grievance suffered. Nevertheless, people on the internet said they wanted to know the whole story and questioned whether Yang Jia should be held entirely accountable when the system offered him no outlet for his grievance. This is not an isolated incident. Democracy – and by this I mean the press, the courts as well as the polling booth - even when it is flawed, as it is everywhere it exists – provides an absolutely necessary outlet for potentially explosive buildups of grievance.

Beyond even that, I believe there is a profound but unmeasurable effect on the individual who feels she or he has a voice. The Chinese I meet are under no illusion that they have any impact on the future governance of their country. But many of them seek a voice. The internet is the clearest indication of that – it is full of debate, much of which is silenced, some of which is not. At the moment, China has side-stepped the ballot box and is practicing the populism of the internet forum. An economic boom is one thing, a healthy country is quite another.

05 November 2008 | 2:12:02 PM |

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5077899.ece

The Transformational Internet

The internet has already played a role in what may later today - bated breath - be a transformation of US politics. Here's what the internet is doing in China:

04 November 2008 | 9:11:00 AM |

All a Writer Wants to Hear

I'm in Hong Kong for a few days. Here is the view from my window. It's what's known as a partial harbour view.

A British man who works in the Macmillan office here told me a nice story this morning. He has a domestic helper working in his home (this being Hong Kong she is likely an English-speaking Filipina, although I didn't confirm this). He discovered that she had removed my first book, Falling Off Air, from his bookshelf. A few days later it returned, and the next book, Out of Mind, had gone. That's all a writer wants to hear.

04 November 2008 | 8:24:59 AM |

Our little piece of history

The air, over the past few days, has been vile. Back to pre-Olympic smog, despite regulations to keep twenty per cent of the cars off the road Monday to Friday (we can't use our car on Friday, and the inconvenience is already stretching my committment to the environment). You can smell the dirt in the air. I had been toying with the idea of buying an extra air purifier for the house, and looking out of the window convinced me that the time was right. I made the call to Mike, the genius who realised a couple of years ago that there might be quite a market here for IQAir units - the gold standard of the air purifier industry. I asked what discount he might give me as an old customer (just about any purchasing conversation goes like this in China), and he offered me a little piece of history. Instead of an entirely new machine, I could have - at 15% off full price - a machine used for just five weeks by the Olympic delegation. And now here it sits, humming in our sitting room, gently blowing nice clear air over us, just as it might well have blown nice clean air all over Michael Phelps! Or at least over a junior coach.

22 October 2008 | 5:53:19 AM |

Kidnapped Children, Religious Music, and other matters

For anyone reading The Slaughter Pavilion and interested in the story of the vanishing children, you might be interested in this from the very excellent Global Voices Online. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/10/08/china-40-missing-children-parents-journey-in-beijing/ Sadly, the fiction in The Slaughter Pavilion is not without some basis.

This week, I wrote a blog for the Guardian's Comment is Free section on the banning of Western religious music from concert halls. The ban has not been made public but is, as far as I understand, common knowledge in the concert halls of the capital. No one knows why exactly the authorities have done this, but in my view it's part of a general trend towards the left, that is, towards a more inward-looking China and increased paranoia about exchanges with the West, and fear of Christianity. You can link to my blog here (why the link mentions tibet, I do not know.) http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/08/china.tibet

Also, I've had two lovely reviews for The Slaughter Pavilion in the last few days. One, by Matthew Lewin writing in The Guardian, can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/crime.roundupreviews2

And from Susanna Yager writing in The Sunday Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/10/05/bocrime105.xml

11 October 2008 | 11:38:40 AM |

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/17/china.olympics2008

Reasons To Frown

I've written a blog on the Guardian's Comment is Free site about the stresses on the Communist Party leadership post- OIympics. As the concern surrounding the melamine-tainted milk powder spreads, and all domestically-produced dairy products are removed from shelves, the Communist Party now faces a major food safety scandal. The World Health Organisation is now asking what the central leadership knew and when. They want to know whether the delay in taking timely action was because of a cover-up or simply because of a failure of systems. Among people I've spoken to here, no one is surprised that the Central government knew that children were getting sick way back in July but did not issue a recall for the tainted milk powder until September, and people assume that the centre covered-up because of the Olympics. Anyway, here's the link to the piece I wrote for Comment is Free, complete with comments from several people who seem to believe that no one should raise questions about anything going on in China. Try telling that to the World Health Organisation. Try also telling that to the many Chinese who are desperate for a more responsible and responsive government:

20 September 2008 | 9:51:16 AM |