October 25, 2005

Chen Guangcheng was beat yesterday. Chen was also beat earlier this month. Chen, a 33 year old blind activist from the eastern province of Shandong China, has been placed on house arrest for bringing international attention to forced abortions.
posted by sugarmilktea 19 years ago
  • Horrible and depressingly familiar in general outline, though I'd not heard of Chen Guangcheng before. Despite the impression of being a totalitarian monolith, in China local governments are notoriously a law unto themselves in many respects. The sheer scale of the country means that the Centre cannot enforce a whole raft of policies, including many that are reforming and liberal such as village elections. Beijing in my view lacks the political will to challenge local elites over abuses like this because ultimately, be they out of step with the new thinking in the capital, they are the powerbase on which the party relies. There's an office in Beijing where rural petitioners can come to present their grievances and it's common knowledge that different local governments send officials to kidnap any of their revolting peasantry who have the temerity to queue up outside it and drag them home. As to the family planning laws, I was told of numerous similar instances of pressure that amounted to forcing abortion by villagers whose communities I worked with back in the late 90s in the southwest. The sad truth is that even if the Centre makes regulations forbidding this kind of practice, government works by targets and officials are judged by how well they do in fulfilling them. Family planning is always one of the key indicators in rural areas so many unscrupulous local authorities stop at nothing to make sure they don't fall short on this score.
  • Thanks for sharing that comment Abiezer_C, it's nice to get some added insight...
  • It will only get worse before it gets better and it's a long, long road. Thanks for the links, smt, and the knowledgeable comment, A_C.
  • :( Ahh, if only China had WofMD... oh wait.
  • There's an office in Beijing where rural petitioners can come to present their grievances [...] That reminds me of Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju.
  • That reminds me of Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju. Me too. Except I couldn't remember what it was called. Thanks! ...like every (non martial-arts based) Chinese movie I've seen, it's rather depressing.
  • Remember kids, Walmart has the lowest prices.
  • Being the most populous country on the planet, it only makes sense that China must have a realistic policy on population growth. We may not agree with it, or how it's implemented, but the fact of the matter is the earth can only support so many people. PERIOD. I suggest this is a lesson that a lot of people in the western world need to start grappling with. What doesn't kill us, makes us stronger. There have always been Pandemics, Wars, Famines, and strife, for without these we as a species would surely be extinct by now.
  • Abiezer - is birth control taught/available in those local areas? Are they rural enough that it might make some sense to have more than one child to help farm? It strikes me as ironic that the fundamentalists here in the US are opposed to abortion, and sometimes kill people to demonstrate their disapproval, while Chinese "fundamentalists" force women to have abortions.
  • I'm glad my Chinese baby wasn't aborted at eight months. I can see your point about local government, Abiezer, and Beijing has censured them; but why will they not allow him legal representation? (Beijing lawyers have been warned off.) And why do they permit his continued house arrest incommunicado?
  • Rhetorical questions, sure.
  • Overpopulation will be the eventual cause of massive famine, war, and poverty. In my fantasy world, the president would tell the US population that it is selfish and harmful to society to have more than three children. There would be no laws, only encouragement. I imagine that someday there will be laws everywhere regarding child production.
  • Well at least their not beeping hypocrits, they force tibetians to have abortions, ethniclly cleanse, heathins etcetera. Population control is good, everyone stop bitchin'. Whats shocking is this new plan I heard, some Christian (American of course) church planning to use american sperm banks to artifically inseminate africans, to creat a new "christian" population in Africa. Now that's disturbing. I mean African culture is unique, why should it be changed.
  • I see there has been a statement on this case from one of the official agencies path - certainly the focus of a number of international aid projects I've been aware of has been to help the various family planning agencies move from a policing to a service role - providing reproductive health care and MCH (mother and child health) information. But success has been patchy at best AFAICT. This is another area where the reforms have had a negative impact - the breakdown of the old health insurance system means that mothers get little or no pre-natal care and many children are no longer immunised. Preventable diseases are making a comeback. I believe one of the most common forms of contraception in rural areas is the fitting of IUVs and this is not without attendant hygiene problems too. Certainly it was noticeably the poorest families in the communities I worked in who had the largest families. Although there is doubtless some idea that children can help on the farm (and they do from very young ages) at base I don't think that's it, and now that school is not free familes are aware that kids are mostly a finacial burden. There's chronic underemployment in rural China: most estimates say there are at least 200 million people excess to labour requirements. Family plots are tiny, and remember China has only 9% of the world's farmland for 22% of the world's people. Of course another vital factor is the lack of any old age pensions - your children are the only ones who will care for you in your declining years. wolof - I got the impression that the lawyers were acting in there own cognisance - there are a number of socially minded law centres that do such work. There's been a lot of talk about developing the rule of law here, and some progress has been made, but in many places arbitrary fiat still wins the day. Civil society can and does have an impact though. When police beat to death migrant worker Sun Zhigang in Shenzhen a couple of years back the subsequent outcry from academics and activists led to a change in national vagrancy laws. But such successes are rare; most abuses are committed away from any public scrutiny and go unpunished. Many local journalists also push the boundaries of official censorship to report on such cases but as I said above sadly it seems that ultimately the Centre fears loss of Party control more than it cares about individual citizen's rights. Of course, it's precisely this sort of criminality in government that has led to the 'crisis of legitimacy' which is such a hot topic with the academic commentators here.
  • 200 million!!?? That took my breath away. I didn't realize. I'll be back when I've calmed down to the point where I can make sense.
  • ugh. To Rev. Christian Mockery, bernockle et al.: To say that the world is overpopulated, and therefore women should undergo forced abortions/sterilizations, is equivalent to saying that crime is rampant, and therefore criminals of any kind should be drugged and lobotomized. Coersion and brutality is not an acceptable means of solving any social problem. Further, the abject poverty in which many Chinese families live is more attributable to their (repressive, inefficient) government than it is to their family size.
  • I wouldn't disagree that poverty in China for many is linked to the failures of the political system salvemagistra, but overpopulation has been a problem for well over a century. It was exacerbated by Maoist policies which encouraged child bearing right up until the 1970s, equating a big population with national power. As I said above, China has extreme problems of resource endowment - 9% of the world's farmland, 22% of the mouths to feed, not to mention water and energy. We must remember that when Europe was industrialising we were able to export about a quarter of our population to the New World - both North and South America and also Australia. Unless there is somewhere China can send its several hundred million excess people it's very hard to argue against some sort of family planning policy being essential for sustainable development here. Like you I abhor the notion of forced abortion, but it is an inevitable consequence of the necessity of imposing a family planning policy on a still largely unwilling peasantry under this kind of authoritarian regime that can't control the wortst elements at local level. It seems to me given the above that the best thing to do is to support the many efforts being made to make sure the policy is implemented in the least harmful way possible.
  • I must stop writing long screeds in this thread! Sorry!
  • BeatEN. BeatEN. "Beat" means he was tired. I almost didn't read this item because I don't care about tired people. ... Just some friendly grammar policing. ;)
  • Oooh come here you, I'll beeten you! I was entirely beat yesterday, obviously my grammar was on the downside...
  • Less useless grammar policing and more long knowledgeable screeds, please.
  • Less useless grammar policing and more long knowledgeable screeds, please. I'll second that. Please A_C, don't apologize for your greatly-appreciated input to this thread. I've read every word...
  • Thanks for the post, SMT.
  • Less useless grammar policing and more long knowledgeable screeds, please. Enthusiastically thirded.
  • Fourthed
  • I'd like to point out that "fourthed" is grammatically incorrect... Just kidding. I have to say I also don't get the leap from "wake up and smell the coffee, there are too darned many people in the world" to "therefore, it's ok to look the other way as far as these brutal forced abortions". Maybe I'm misinterpreting the comments here.
  • Chen made Time Magazine's list of 100 influential people: "TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World." He is still missing by the way...
  • Chen has been formally arrested after being illegally detained for 89 days. First confirmation of his whereabouts since he disappeared in March.
  • Chen's 70 year-old mother and three year-old son: abducted. I missed this news. Alas, this story remains disheartening...
  • Here's a story from the New York Times today about Chen Guangcheng. Apparently he has now been formally charged with....blocking traffic. Sorry if this isn't new information, I haven't really been following the story.
  • Thanks for the link flongj. Good to see Chen getting some wider exposure, though a bit disappointed that this article only brushes the surface.
  • Scuffles outside Chen's trial. 'Activists and supporters had gathered outside the court in Shandong to support Mr Chen, whose case has attracted considerable attention.'
  • U.S. Seeks Chinese Activist's Release ...And a bit more on the scuffles outside the trial and Chen's home. It is just this spur of the moment acknowledgement of a tiny bit of benefit that becomes a virtually inexhaustible violence resource for the tyrannical CCP.
  • China activist trial ends in disarray The trial of a blind Chinese rights activist ended in disarray on Friday with his main attorney detained until the hearing ended and the defendant rejecting two officially appointed stand-in lawyers. "Chen Guangcheng fiercely protested. He was so angry that he threw up several times..." "There is no doubt in my mind that there is a concerted crackdown on rights lawyers under way... This seems to have been sanctioned by the highest level and they're really sending a chilling message to lawyers in China."
  • Excuse me, but throwing up is not something usually associated with anger. What have they done to this poor bastard?
  • Thanks for the link AC. Chen may be blind, but his heart definitely found a true love in his wife.
  • I just saw that flongj, and am overjoyed and astounded, though of course a retrial looms. You would hope that that will result in acquittal though, as the wind seems to be blowing in a healthier direction. I was speaking to a long term friend and collaborator of Mr Chen's recently, and the more I learn about him the more I respect his courage and decency.
  • Great news indeed. Likewise, one can only imagine how the retrial will proceed based on the events over the past year. My heart goes out to Chen and his family in this moment of newfound hope. Abiezer_Coppe, anything you can share that you may have learned of Chen?
  • One thing he said that particularly impressed me smt was that Chen had originally been a disability rights activist, and it was only his success at this that led women having problems with the family planning authorities to approach him. It wasn't an issue that touched his family personally. His sense of decency led him to take up a fight that wasn't his, as a good neigbour and fellow human being, because he was asked to. He is in jail for not shying away when duty called, and that is the mark of the better person to me, and a spirit all too rare in China today, or indeed, rare anywhere. The person I met had known Chen for years, as they both worked on improving the lot of the blind and partially sighted in China, another very marginalised group of people. His description of Chen distinguished the man from a number of social activists here, who whilst they are fighting the good fight often tend towards self-aggrandisement (usually quite forgivably and understandable) or other failings of the ego, but this is no part of Chen's character apparently. That is also praiseworthy in my eyes. The person also had some details of the incidents which led to Chen's imprisonment, which led me to believe that, quite apart from the rest, he's in no way involved in the disturbances that he was sentenced for inciting.
  • Thanks for sharing that AC!! Nice to hear, especially coming from a source that knows Chen personally. It seems to match my gut feeling for Chen based on various pieces I have read on him. His sense of decency led him to take up a fight that wasn't his, as a good neigbour and fellow human being, because he was asked to... a spirit all too rare... Indeed, a trait quite rare anywhere as you mentioned. Especially in this day and age.
  • Li Jianqiang, the more combative of the two, wrote a manifesto that called China a “super jail” and described its leaders as “ruthless dictators.” He listed Li Jinsong’s name as the lead author and posted it on the Internet. Li Jinsong, who takes a much softer line, said the essay, which circulated widely, so enraged China’s top leaders that it derailed a major appeals court victory in his highest-profile case, involving China’s “barefoot lawyer,” Chen Guangcheng. The essay may also have given the police in Shandong Province an excuse to send some thugs who assaulted him, he said. Li Jianqiang acknowledged a few weeks later that he wrote the essay himself. But he said it amounted to a minor mistake and dismissed claims that it had a direct impact on the court case.
    Rivals Seek to Expand Freedoms in China
  • Ugh. Thanks for posting this update, flongj. I wonder if having the Olympics hosted in China next year will really have any kind of impact on cases such as this. Will it draw international attention that was otherwise non-existant? Will NBC cut to a live shot of the "Chen Cam" during delayed broadcast? I feel that Chen continues to be "brushed under the rug" in an attempt to make him vanish from any collective thought concerning him. And who will listen to those few who speak out on his behalf?
  • Thanks for the post, Abiezer. I often wonder how his situation is going... and it's sad to see that his family is still under such scrutiny.
  • http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17877005>Chen scales a wall to escape house arrest and makes his way to the US Embassy in Beijing Years... but I had to come back and post for this guy I've admired so long
  • the link Clearly, it shows!