China's Moral High Ground on Libya... Not

Chinese President Hu Jintao rebuked French President Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday over NATO's enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya.

 

He said this during Sarkozy's visit to the Chinese capital, which observers say was worded in unusually strong language at the French president, whose country is the only one to formally recognize the rebels fighting against Muammar Gaddafi.

 

"If the military action brings disaster to innocent civilians, resulting in an even greater humanitarian crisis, then that is contrary to the original intention of the Security Council resolution," he said.

 

Hu called for an immediate cease-fire and expressed concerns Libya may end up being divided and said force would complicate a negotiated settlement. China, Hu said, "is not in favour of the use of force in international affairs."

 

China is trying to take the moral high ground, but it is in the UN charter that if civilians are in danger that NATO must step in. Also, NATO is doing what the rebels had requested weeks ago when Gaddafi started turning on his own civilians.

 

In any case, China probably doesn't want any bombings on its own investments there and hopes Gaddafi will stay in power to keep the lucrative deals going.

 

In the meantime China's attempt to spin the story about innocent Libyans being killed by air strikes have backfired.

 

While Chinese state media claims Libyans strongly oppose western intervention, the Libyans made sure China got the word loud and clear.

 

In Chinese characters they wrote "Mommar Gaddafi is a liar!" which was caught on TV cameras.

 

And in late February Gaddafi had threatened to execute protesters and send in tanks in order to cleanse Libya "house by house" in an action he compared to Tiananmen Square.

 

"People in front of tanks were crushed. The unity of China was more important than those people on Tiananmen Square.

 

"When Tiananmen Square happened, tanks were sent to deal with them," he continued. "It's not a joke. I will do whatever it takes to make sure part of the country isn't taken away."

Surely the Chinese government was squirming as it still denies a massacre happened on June 4.

 

The Chinese government must have been squirming when he said this as Beijing still refuses to acknowledge any massacre took place...

Where is Gao?

Almost a year and no sign of Gao

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) has disappeared for almost a year and a United Nations agency has demanded the Chinese government release him immediately. Gao was tortured in previous detentions, probably for his work on defending the Falun Gong.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also said in the written statement the Chinese government should "provide for reparation of the harm caused" to Gao. 

"The UN Working Group held that the detention violated international law because Gao's disappearance was punishment for exercising his fundamental human rights and because the government failed to meet even the minimum international standards for due process," the group said in the statement.

Gao was tortured when he was detained in 2007 and last year; against warnings not to, he wrote in detail about his earlier detention in which he was tortured. He told of how he was beaten with electric batons, and burning cigarettes were placed near his eyes among other things.

The Chinese government's response to the UN statement?

It asked the UN body to respect its judicial sovereignty.

While Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said she didn't know where Gao was, she said:

"China attaches importance to cooperation with the UN human rights mechanisms. We also urge these mechanisms to maintain an objective and impartial attitude and to respect China's judicial sovereignty.

"I would like to add that China is a country ruled by law, with an independent judiciary that handles cases."

The UN body is maintaining an objective and impartial attitude. The fact is Gao is missing. He has not been seen for almost a year. He was previously tortured. How is that biased?

Does China's judiciary allow for torture? On paper is probably does not. So why do shadowy security people continue to detain and physically and psychologically harm people like Gao without any legal right to do so?

Yu's stonewalling just suggests China is not prepared to deal with this issue -- hoping these defiant statements will put an end to things.

But we will not stop asking for Gao's release until we see him with our own eyes.

And there are many others we wish to ask about too (from chinageeks.org): 

People who we know have been arrested:

1. Ran Yunfei 冉云飞 (inciting to subvert state authority)
2. Ding Mao 丁茅 (inciting to subvert state authority)

People we know have been detained:

1. Chen Wei 陈卫 (inciting to subvert state authority)
2. Quan Lianzhao 全连昭 (inciting to subvert state authority)
3. Liang Haiyi 梁海怡 (inciting to subvert state authority)
4. Zhu Yufu 朱虞夫 (inciting to subvert state authority)
5. Guo Weidong 郭卫东 (inciting to subvert state authority)
6. Sun Desheng 孙德胜 (inciting to subvert state authority)
7. Liu Huiping 刘慧萍 (inciting to subvert state authority)
8. Wei Qiang 魏强 (illegal assembly)
9. Zhang Jiannan 张健男 (illegal assembly)
10. Yang Qiuyu 杨秋雨 (illegal assembly)
11. Hua Chunhui 华春辉 (endangering national security)
12. Li Hai 李海 (inciting disturbance)
13. Li Yongsheng 李永生 (inciting disturbance)
14. Wang Lihong 王荔蕻 (inciting disturbance)
15. Ma He 马贺 (inciting disturbance)
16. Wei Shuishan 魏水山 (unknown)
17. Bi Mingkai 薜明凯 (unknown)
18. Huang Xiang 黄香 (unknown)

People under house arrest:

1. Tang Jingling 唐荆陵 (inciting to subvert state authority)
2. Ye Du 野渡 (inciting to subvert state authority)
3. Liu Xia (Liu Xiaobo's wife)
   

People being held in mental institutions:

1. Qian Jin 钱进

People who are missing (an incomplete list):

1. Liu Guohui 刘国慧
2. Li Tiantian 李天天
3. Jiang Tianyong 江天勇
4. Teng Biao 滕彪
5. Zhang Shanguang 张善光
6. Qi Zhiyong 齐志勇
7. Gu Chuan 古川
8. Liu Shihui 刘士辉 and his wife
9. Yuan Xinting 袁新亭
10. Zhang Tao 张涛 (aka 呆麻雀张)
11. Zhang Xianle 张献乐
12. Cheng Wanyun 程婉芸
13. Liu Dejun 刘德军
14. Liu Anjun 刘安军
15. Zhang Haibo 张海波
16. Lan Ruoyu 蓝若宇
17. Hu Di 胡荻
18. Zhang Jingpeng 张敬朋
19. Li Shuangde 李双德
20. E Laoda 鹅老大
21. Peng Xinzhong 彭新忠
22. Yang Hengjun 杨恒均
23. Zhou Li 周莉
24. Wang Yanfen 汪燕芬

Baby Dilemma

We all know "One country, two systems" isn't perfect, and there's evidence of this in the maternity wards in Hong Kong.

Lots of mainland Chinese women come here to give birth to not only have a child that has Hong Kong residency, but also allows them to have more than one child, as he or she won't have a hukou, or household registration.

And so many women cross the border to have babies that Hong Kong's public hospitals are now short of staff because maternity specialists can get paid more in private hospitals where many mainland women are willing to shell out for expensive services.

Professor Leung Tak-yeung from the Chinese University of Hong Kong's department of obstetrics and gynecology said the public hospitals' newborn intensive care units were 20 percent over capacity, citing the example of twins born last week and there was no room in the maternity ward so they had to be put in the pediatrics unit.

In addition, the turnover of obstetricians in public hospitals in the past year was 11.2 percent, one of the highest among specialists, according to Hospital Authority figures.

This is at a time where the number of births in Hong Kong has risen in the past 10 years, with births by mainland mothers at 46 percent of the 88,000 newborns last year. Their numbers increased by 9 percent from 2009-2010, while the number of births by Hong Kong mothers only rose by 3.5 percent.

There are now calls for the government to restrict the number of mainlanders coming to the city to give birth, otherwise this will compromise health services for Hong Kong mothers and their newborns.

"The number of mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong should be controlled," said Dr Cheung Tak-hong, chief of service in obstetrics and gynecology at Prince of Wales Hospital. "We are not against them giving birth here, but we need to ensure the quality of service provision and the safety of [local] mothers and children."

Hong Kong hospitals should really be putting their priority towards Hong Kong women giving birth, but things go into a gray area when it comes to mainlanders coming here to have babies.

It'll be interesting to see how the government handles this pressing issue, which is two-pronged -- more mainland women coming and paying to have expensive deliveries, thus leading to more medical staff leaving the public sector and going to private hospitals.

Given the Tsang administration's track record in the last few months it isn't too promising that something definitive will be done. Can they limit the number of pregnant mainlanders coming in? How would they regulate that? But it is alarming to see so many well-heeled mainlanders coming here to have babies just by opening their wallets.

It just reinforces their notion that money can by everything -- including residency.

The Morality of Publicity Stunts

A few days ago there was a story on the newspaper I saw that looked odd. A Chinese woman was shuffling on her knees carrying her sick baby daughter down a busy road in Guangzhou because a man who claimed to be rich said she'd giver her 20,000RMB ($3,047) if she would walk one kilometre on her knees.

She did it but then the man with the online name "Son of the Guangzhou rich" didn't pay up, and the media coverage over this development led to the woman getting more than 280,000RMB ($42,647) in donations. She seemed foolish to think someone on the internet would give her the money.

But now it has been revealed it was all a stunt to tap into people's sympathy and anger.

The mother, Xie Sanxiu has now offered to return all the money and apologized for "hurting the media and society", but insisted she only agreed to do the stunt for her seven-month-old daughter who has eye cancer.

The man who helped plan Xie to do this was Shi Jinquan, a website content manager who also apologized but said this was the only way to raise money and thought it was worth it because a baby would be saved.

"You can say the means were not noble and people were angry, but I'm only trying to help," he said. "Society is so cold and cruel. If she could have got help immediately when she asked for it, I would not have helped her in this way.

"In my personal research of internet communications, anger can easily attract attention, and opinions spread on a very large scale. This was a last resort."

Xie is a garment factory worker with her husband and they already have a 12-year-old son. She gave birth to her daughter Shanshan in August, but two months later found out the little girl has retinoblastoma, a form of eye cancer.

The family asked for help from the Civil Affairs Department in their home province of Hubei, but only received a paper that acknowledged they were below the poverty line. Xie tried begging in front of hospitals got nothing, while asking for donations online only got her 400RMB.

Desperate, Xie posted a plea on Tianya.cn, asking for donations and that's when "Son of the Guangzhou Rich" replied back with his demand that she walk on her knees.

So she did, specifically on the road where an influential Guangzhou newspaper group is located which got her media attention, especially when the man didn't show up to give her the money he had promised her.

As a result the story was quickly picked up, and anger and sympathy over Xie's humiliation led to a flood of donations.

But it turned out the IP address of "Son of the Guangzhou Rich" was the same as the content manager responsible for where Xie posted her plea. He had also coached her on how to answer media questions. As a result Shi was fired from his job and he was bombarded with calls from people angry that they had been deceived.

While he did suggest she do a physically demanding stunt, one has to admit it drew lots of attention and donations for Xie. She had tried to get help from the government, but it ignored her -- so Shi only tried to help her.

It's a sad commentary on the government for not trying to help its own people -- something Premier Wen Jiabao hopes to reverse in the recent National People's Congress meetings. When the government doesn't listen to them, the people have to resort to other means to get what they need.

Shi himself didn't have the money to give Xie so was he really wrong in helping her with this publicity stunt? It was morally wrong, but was there another way? Apparently there are many sad cases like these posted on the internet everyday. Perhaps Wen should read these pleas online and help at least one a day. Perhaps then the people would really feel like the government is serving the people.