Countdown Beijing

It's Showtime: A Spectacle of China's Might -- and Redemption

2008-08-08T14:08:08Z

For up-to-date coverage of the 2008 Olympics please see our new blog on the Games, "Beijing Beat". Here's our Web story on the stunning Beijing Olympics opening ceremony:

...Photo for NEWSWEEK by Mike Powell

From inside the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium, fireworks dazzled and the thunder of 2,008 performers drumming on traditional fou percussion instruments rolled throughout the stadium. High-tech special effects gave even the kitschiest subject matter a startling edge. An ode to China's invention of movable type—ho hum, you might say— morphed into a vast sea of undulating cubic shapes, simulating a giant computer keyboard—and took my breath away.

When five-time Olympic medal winner Li Ning prepared to ignite the Olympic flame, invisible wires swooped him skyward for a gravity-defying space-walk around the stadium's rooftop opening. When gymnast Li, who launched a successful sports clothing and accessories empire after snagging three gold medals in Los Angeles, finally lit a gigantic torch perched on the rim of the Bird's Nest, the crowd went wild.

This was China's soft-power version of "shock and awe ." Or at least, that metaphor ran through my mind as the pyrotechnics reminded me of watching the U.S. "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad in 2003 from my Palestine Hotel room balcony. Just as Washington's adventure in Iraq today symbolizes the beginning of the decline of U.S. influence around the world—despite its military might—so will China's hosting of these Olympics be seen as a sign that it has arrived as a global power, despite its tarnished human rights record. Nowhere will this tilting balance of power be more pointedly symbolized than in the Olympic medal count, where China may have a better than even chance of snagging the highest number of gold medals, displacing the U.S.

Flanked by leaders of the United States and Russia—among 80-some other foreign dignitaries—Chinese president Hu Jintao stiffly declared the 2008 Games had begun. Inside he had reason to feel triumphant: one theme hammered (or, more accurately, drummed) into the audience again and again was "harmony," a codeword for Hu's Confucius-influenced call for a "harmonious society." Yet Hu could also be excused for feeling jittery and overwhelmed by today's tsunami of national pride. China has always felt more comfortable in the role of an underdog, as a feisty champion of the developing world, than as a big world power.

That's because global clout brings with it global responsibilities. As a rainbow coalition of anti-China activists has shown in a series of protests this year, Hu and his comrades have dwindling excuses for standing to one side when genocide is unfolding in Darfur (Khartoum looks to Beijing for aid and moral support) or the Burmese junta (Rangoon ditto) ratchets up its repression or, indeed, the Chinese regime tightens the screws on its own population.
Shortly after tonight's opening ceremonies began, Russian tanks were reported to be rolling into Georgia—a stark reminder to Hu (and Putin for that matter) that even a sacred event such as the Olympics cannot prevent harsh political realities from intruding.

Most pundits analyzed tonight's festivities as a celebration of Chinese might. I saw a somewhat more complex message. True, the sight of goose-stepping soldiers carrying the Olympic flag (shades of Berlin 1936) or the sheer precision of thousands of performers moving intricately as one (a la Pyongyang's Mass Games) made it easy to focus on China's autocratic demeanor.

But if you read the cultural icons carefully, they also weave a tapestry of loss and redemption. The unique thing about China's current aspirations to greatness is that it's been down that road before. While Beijing's economic achievements over the past three decades have been mind-boggling, similar accomplishments took place at least twice before in its long history—a history that dominated tonight's performance, starting with the arcane fou bronze drums dating back to the Xia Dynasty (ca 2070 BC).

During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), China's trading routes stretched along the Silk Road to Constantinople, and the Middle Kingdom was a famous source of silks, Buddhist teachings and innovations in printing and cartography. In the Ming Dynasty, China's legendary eunuch admiral Zheng Ho (1371 -1433 AD) navigated his treasure fleets as far away as West Asia and Zanzibar, returning with tribute from vassal states and exotic finds such as giraffes. But those golden eras ended after economic setbacks and internal decline.

Tonight's show strummed many of those themes. The wire-suspended dancers who flitted across the sky high above the audience, a la Peter Pan, were apsaras (like angels) whose likenesses are painted in many Tang-era Buddhist grottoes such as those at Dunhuang, along the ancient Silk Road. And Zheng Ho warranted a whole dance performance dedicated to his seven fleets, which carried 27,000 people in all to distant lands.
Yet many of the Chinese inventions extolled (however imaginatively) tonight—from gunpowder to paper to movable printing type—were innovations that ultimately stalled in China, only to be advanced in leaps and bounds by other nations. And while the entire evening was an homage to the 2500-year-old Analects of Confucius—an ancient Chinese thinker who "comes first among the top 10 historical celebrities in the world," as the official Opening Ceremony Media Guide puts it—nothing was said of China's Great Helmsman Mao Zedong.

It was Mao who jettisoned Confucian ethics and unleashed the incredibly destructive 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution which gutted China's educational system, lobotomized the intelligentsia, and rendered the economy a basket case.

So, yes, this was a celebration to China's illustrious heritage—and of its promising future. But tonight's razzle-dazzle painted the portrait of an idealized Chinese past, of a gauzily perfect what-should-have-been instead of the rather more tawdry what-really-was. And it isn't only the ancient, imperial past that has been treated to this collective amnesia. At the finale of the evening, as sports-and-business icon Li Ning trotted like an astronaut, parallel to the ground, around the rim of the Bird's Nest, images of China's Olympics torch relay were projected against the flat panels of the rim. Predictably enough, the stops in Paris and London showed nothing of the rambunctious anti-China protests that had erupted in those and other cities to underscore China's poor human rights record, particularly in Tibet.

Not everyone believes Beijing deserves another chance to be a great power; China's hosting of the Olympics has been hotly debated and fraught with controversy ever since Beijing won its bid seven years ago. When China's critics launched protests against its policies in Tibet—after violent riots which erupted in Lhasa March 14—emotional Chinese both at home and abroad rallied to their government's defense, calling for a boycott of French goods (because of the anti-China protests in Paris) and stridently criticizing Western media for allegedly biased reporting. Some Western journalists based in Beijing received death threats.

But in a year of many surprises, the story line shifted yet again after yet another unexpected development. The devastating May earthquake in Sichuan province grabbed domestic attention and triggered an unexpected outpouring of domestic philanthropy and volunteerism that took even the government by surprise. In a flash, it seemed, strident anti-Western voices quieted down, and so did much of the Western criticism of China, at least for a time, as the international community scrambled to send rescue personnel and relief supplies to the stricken area.

China's post-Mao economic boom, which lifted hundreds of millions of residents out of poverty, has given the country another shot at the sort of international influence it had enjoyed in the Tang and Ming dynasties. And the international sympathy triggered by Sichuan's quake, which killed 70,000 people, also paradoxically gave Beijing a second chance to get the Olympics right after the PR disasters of the European torch relay.

The quake's significance was acknowledged by some of the Olympic pageantry. When the 183-person Chinese Olympics team entered the stadium to thunderous applause tonight, flag-bearer and basketball celebrity Yao Ming walked alongside a 9-year-old Sichuan quake survivor. President of the Beijing Games Organizing Committee, Liu Qi, said that after the quake the international community's "heart-warming support has heightened the morale of the Chinese nation in the reconstruction of quake-stricken areas and boosted our confidence and determination in staging successful Games." For the next two weeks, China's every move will be scrutinized as never before—will the crackdown on dissidents continue? Will the contest for gold get ugly? And Beijing will be bending over backwards not to flub this hard-fought chance to be great once again.

Traffic: Celebrating on Beijing's Ring Roads

2008-08-07T10:04:07Z

It's showtime as Olympic athletes and tourists stream into Beijing. For those of us who've waited months for the Olympics amid construction dust and growing traffic congestion, the rewards are now here. Tuesday brought my first Olympic perk, and it was fabulous.

But it didn't start out well. A sudden late afternoon text message telling me of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) press conference sent me scurrying to the Olympic Green. It was peak rush hour and after 30 minutes hunting for a taxi in the snarl-up near Newsweek's bureau I was ready to abandon the idea as it seemed impossible to get there in time. Then an empty cab appeared. The driver—more switched on to the possibilities than I was—demanded to see my Olympic press pass.

Soon we were waving it at policemen and hitting Beijing's Second Ring Road at 100 kilometers an hour (63 mph). Driving in Beijing is normally not fun. It's frustrating. Anyone who enjoys driving—especially driving fast—should avoid a Beijing traffic jam. But on Tuesday evening the Torch came back to Beijing and Second Ring Road—one of Beijing's most congested roads at any time of day—was cleared to greet it.

We raced round policemen, almost taking their legs off at the knee, but they cheerfully waved us on. OK, I know the buzz I felt was anti-social, and ecologically unsound. Others suffered as Second Ring Road's usual heavy traffic was crammed into service lanes and bike lanes to make way for us. Just south of the Bird's Nest stadium we too became small fry, forced to the roadside by a stream of black Audis and SUVs heading towards the stadium, carrying officials to watch Opening Ceremony final rehearsals. But a 30 minute journey took just 12, and for those 12 thrilling minutes I got to see life through their eyes.

NOTE: THIS IS A CROSS-POSTING FROM "BEIJING BEAT", OUR NEW BLOG ON THE 2008 OLYMPICS

Torch Relay Enters Beijing: the Square, Circled

2008-08-06T11:08:08Z

Today I de-camped at dawn to watch the torch relay in that you-know-which-famous-square. A couple dozen other journalists and I were herded to a spot facing Mao’s portrait, We waited and waited. The last time I’d waited that long in that place, that early in the morning, was in 1989 during a brief and ill-fated Beijing Spring.

Back then I was waiting for Chinese police to come clear the square of hundreds of youthful protestors who’d hung colorful silk banners off official flagpoles in front of the granite obelisk known as the Monument to the People’s Heroes. (Chinese look down on your political movement if you don’t have flags made of luxuriant silk, and if you don’t know how to brandish them just right so that the fabric floats like butterflies’ wings.) These kids in 1989 – about the same age as the youth in the square this morning -- chanted pro-democracy slogans and strummed folk-songs on guitars.

Waiting for Yao Ming and the torch relay...

That earlier time I had stayed overnight in the square, surrounded by this moonlit and surreal Chinese Woodstock scene, because the next day Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was due in town for a historic Sino-Soviet summit. I assumed police would come waving their truncheons, and maybe lobbing tear gas, to clear the square of this ragtag assembly of demonstrators before Gorby’s arrival. Otherwise the protestors would be able to hijack the summit spotlight, China’s leaders would be embarrassed, and things would get messy.

Police never came that night. Leaders were embarrassed. Things got messy.

We still don’t know exactly how many people died in the crackdown, and the topic remains an extremely touchy one still for authorities. Despite the unblocking of a number of websites on Aug. 1 -- after the IOC squawked and Chinese officials caved (sort of) -- many sites related to the 1989 crackdown remain inaccessible to ordinary Netizens.

Which is why this item will not mention the name of that famous-square-whose-name-cannot-be-mentioned.The last blog posting we did on this topic, by my colleague Jonathan Ansfield, (who did name names) not only created access problems for this blog but even managed to get certain pages of another blog blocked for a time because it had cited Jonathan’s item (sorry, Roland).

So, back to the torch relay, which entered Beijing amidst much hoopla on its way to the finale and the Aug. 8 Olympics opening ceremony. Today there were many, many luxuriant silk flags fluttering in the square. Red and white flags representing the Olympics and the Beijing Games. Lots of familiar red Chinese national flags. And a sea of crimson flags wielded by youth in matching red t-shirts, caps and backpacks all exhorting observers to revel in the glory of….Coca Cola.

Not to be outdone, on the opposite side of the square was another group of exuberant youth, with another Chinese national flag that was truly enormous. It required a number of excited kids to coordinate in holding it parallel to the ground, tilted slightly so that photographers could capture the true impact of its immense size. After all, who could be more worthy to be flag-bearers in China than these enthusiastic volunteers brought to you by….McDonald’s.

Indeed, the torch relay organizers who bussed us into the square amidst extremely tight security thoughtfully gave each journalist a bag of McDonald’s goodies. A Big Mac’s for breakfast is something I never dreamed of in Beijng (or anywhere else) in 1989.

In today’s China we don’t blink an eye as we chow down on carb-heavy Western fast food waiting for worldwide basketball celebrity Yao Ming to grab the Olympic torch and trot past icons of the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing supremacy (such as the national emblems on the Great Hall of the People), as onlookers organized by famous Games sponsors cheer and tiny shaven-headed boys dressed in daffodil-yellow pajama-style outfits perform martial-arts maneuvers while a massive security presence including a brand-new spit-polished black Hummer with police markings lurks in the alleyways, a CCTV news helicopter captures what will become the official version of the scene while flying lazy arcs over the square, and Chairman Mao Zedong’s portrait gazes sternly on the entire proceedings from the south gate of the fabled Forbidden City.

What would Mao think of all this? Marxist ideology has given way to McDonalds. The Communist party has linked arms with Coke. Beijing police watch CSI Miami for tips on how real police act and outfit themselves (even if Hummers are themselves wider than some Beijing sidestreets). The youth in the square today were not chanting “Democracy! Freedom!” as they did in 1989 but rather “Go China! Go Beijing!” Mao’s squat and stolid mausoleum was all but eclipsed by fluttering silk flags, floating over all of us like a red tide.The square has come full circle.

Gimme Shelter: Relief Efforts Continue in Sichuan

2008-08-05T09:48:52Z

Jennifer Conrad reports on continuing post-quake relief efforts in Sichuan:

British industrial designer Luke Cardew was traveling in France when
he received a voicemail from a friend: "China needs shelters." The
Sichuan earthquake had just struck. For Cardew, who works out of
Shanghai as a freelance designer, the disaster provided an incredible
opportunity for him to use his skills to help people.

By all accounts, the efforts of Chinese volunteers and workers have
been tremendous, but sometimes foreigners have provided specialized
knowledge that filled important needs. Cardew, for example, knows
quite a bit about creating temporary shelters in disaster areas.

He was studying design at Central St. Martins when the Pakistan
earthquake struck in 2005. Assigned to work on a self-directed
project, Cardew designed a temporary shelter made of Beeboard
cardboard. "Central focuses more on the conceptual and theoretical
side of design. However I am from a more practical background. I
thought it might be interesting to combine Centrals' conceptual
approach with a more practical project. The solution half-satisfied me
and half the school. But I continued to be interested in finding a
cheap design solution for disaster relief."

During six months os research, he learned the types of
designs people prefer: straight, house-like side walls (rather than
the slanted walls of a tent) make a shelter feel more comfortable and
secure.

Back to work in Shanghai a few days after the May 12 Sichuan quake,
Cardew began working on a prototype for a temporary shelter; he
coordinated with partners to secure funding. The result was a
structure made of split bamboo with a waterproof tarpaulin cover. The
design, inspired by bamboo greenhouses from the Anhui provice, houses
a six-person family for up to a year.

In some cases his group, I Bought a Shelter, delivers the shelters as kits. And
sometimes, he adapts the shelter to fit local conditions.

Once he was sent by a Chinese relief group to Zundao, north of
Mianyang. After spending a few hours talking to the locals about their
skill levels and looking at available materials, he was handed a piece
of white chalk and asked, "Can you draw?"

With a deadline in half an hour, he sketched a housing solution on a
school blackboard. The walls are made mostly of rubble (reducing the
amount of wood used) and the scheme further stretches materials since it houses
two families, each with a bedroom, living room, and exterior kitchen.
The families would each be given 500 RMB for constructing
semi-permanent shelters, so he encouraged them to use that money for
corrugated cement roofing.

Although he later had drawings printed to distribute to other
villages, Cardew hopes the villagers don't build the shelter exactly
as he presented it, but adapt them based on their preferences and
skills.

"I want to see what they've done. If they've morphed the shelters,
then I'll learn something," he says.

Even the Propaganda Dept wants records broken

2008-08-04T14:03:12Z

Okay, so Xinhua's English-language break on the attack beat the Chinese version by more than an hour. Early info on Monday’s ambush in Xinjiang was spotty too: the perpetrators' identities absent, and suspicions of a “terrorist” plot hence, as usual, thin at best. Then broadcaster CCTV, after releasing the first whiff of news in Chinese on its News Channel at noon, skipped the story entirely on the tightly scripted Evening News. By afternoon the news began tumbling down top news charts of Chinese news portals. And the next day the headline was a minor blip on the front pages of mainland papers. The story was dumped deep inside in a single-paragraph summary, at a fraction of the column inches used by official English-language coverage directed at foreign readers.

Yet one thing did impress about Chinese coverage of the Monday morning attack in Kashgar, in which two Uighurs reportedly killed 16 border police and wounded another 16: not that official media broke it, but that it did so with uncustomary hustle. The lag was a little over three hours. That’s swift for state media when it comes to an incident of this magnitude, delicacy and geographical remoteness from Beijing. It’s supersonic for news out of Xinjiang, where Chinese reports of violent plots by separatist Muslim Uighurs tend to be a challenge to confirm or deny. We foreign hacks are used to working our way back days or weeks to chase iffy revelations by Xinjiang officials or stingy official press matchers issued only in response to a Radio Free Asia dispatch or the like. That's the way it was as recently as this Spring, in fact, when the government took its leisurely time to acknowledge a spate of clashes and foiled plots.

The comparative burst of speed Monday was no fluke, Chinese journalists inform us. After the hurly burly the country went through the first half of the year, the Communist Party leadership is placing never-before-seen demands on government media to gain the edge on reporting serious disturbances and manage crises more deftly. Key to the strategy is to get the official scoop on events before overseas media do, particularly around the time of the Olympic Games.

In recent weeks the deputy head of the Party’s Central Publicity Department, Li Dongsheng, has hammered home this agenda in meetings with provincial propaganda counterparts and top representatives of “central media” organs, according to two sources within Party media organizations. According to one formulation, they and other Chinese journalists say, the orders are to diyi shijian qiangbao –to “grab” the news as soon as it happens. “Central media” include the Party papers People’s Daily and Guangming Daily, news wires Xinhua and the China News Service, broadcasters CCTV, China National Radio, and China Radio International, and official dailies China Daily and the Economic Daily. Provincial propaganda bosses would relay word to local government media as well.

Li instructed them that over the two-month “Olympic period” - July 20-September 20, through the time of Paralympics - official media should take greater initiative to report “major sudden incidents” (natural disasters, accidents, riots, terrorist attacks, etc.) . As usual, the Xinhua News Agency was intended to act as the clearing house for such news and all other Chinese media were under orders to pick up its reports. But Xinhua and other official media outlets were not necessarily to wait for explicit instructions from senior propaganda authorities before running with the news. The official embrace of up-to-the-minute news is no secret here; Beijing has been touting it in the context of new rules on official accountability and such events as the Sichuan earthquake, and the idea of an express lane for breaking events has been floating around Party propaganda circles for some time. But for the department to expressly grant such leeway is “unprecedented,” according to one of the Party media sources, who were briefed on the recent meetings. They spoke on condition of anonymity so as avoid repercussions.

As to how official outlets are to report a “sudden incident”, well, that's not going to change. Any such story still had to reflect official conventions and the Party line, or what is known in Party jargon as its “guidance of public opinion” - “not your Newsweek stuff,” as one of the sources put it. Moreover, the leeway to bypass some of the traditional channels only applied during Olympic period. “It’s still represents a new direction of transparency. It’s more open than before. In that way it’s still a form of progress,” he said, adding, “but right now only for the Olympics.”

Nor were the Party newsmen under any illusion as to the primary intent: to strengthen the authoritativeness of the Party, and minimize embarrassment to Beijing. That's especially vital with well over 20,000 foreign reporters descending on Beijing to cover the Games this week. In the briefings, Li and other propaganda bosses have made clear that the objective is try to beat them in the event of major disturbances – at least out of the blocks. (No, this does not in any way explain why on Tuesday police in Kashgar beat two Japanese journalists trying to report at the scene of Monday's attack).

Xinjiang was not the first big test case of the new M.O. on faster reporting. Reports of bus blasts in Kunming last Monday also appeared to embody the edict, sources said. “The thinking is that if you don’t report it first, the country will be on the defensive from the very start,” said the first source.

But the new M.O. did not rule out that some incidents would still remain under wraps, the other Party media journalist cautioned, pointing to information he had received from official sources of at least one other bombing incident outside Beijing in recent weeks (but which we could not independently verify). “You still cover up what you can cover up. But when you can’t cover it up, you have to report it first,” he summarized: “The point is to contest the foreign media for the right to speak.”

Propaganda's orders to get the scoop stemmed partly from the “spirit” of an “important speech” by Party boss Hu in late June, Li and other propaganda officials also made clear. Hu visited the Party flagship People’s Daily to fete its 60^th birthday, and used the occasion to articulate the media’s “active role” in “guidance of public opinion” (David Bandurski at the China Media Project offers insightful exegesis of what Hu meant). That in turn followed on the state media lessons of the first half of 2008, Li also explained - from the poor and sluggish reporting of snowstorms which plagued much of the country in January to the internationally recognized boon from coverage of Sichuan earthquake in May, and the nasty internationally waged battles over ethnic Tibetan unrest and the Olympic torch relay in-between. The new instructions were packaged as the sum-total learned from those experiences, the sources noted.

Li specifically addressed the case of Tibet, the sources said. Internally, propaganda authorities have recognized for months that the slowness to release news of the outbreak of Tibetan rioting in Lhasa was a mistake which abetted the public relations disaster internationally, they said. But after the initial paralysis, authorities were convinced, they clinched overriding domestic support and stood up to international condemnation by releasing TV clips of the Lhasa riots a few days later. Footage showed Tibetans torching cars and smashing storefronts.

“’Fifty-plus seconds of television footage surpassed the force of 100,000 soldiers,’” one of the sources cited the deputy propaganda boss saying.

Coverage of the international torch relay too had boosted the leadership’s confidence in its ability to engineer public opinion. In conversations in recent months, these sources and other Chinese media insiders have marveled at how the trajectory of nationalist protests corresponded directly to the degree of detail people were exposed to via official press. When protesters marred the opening legs in Athens and London, Chinese media were mum. But as details seeped in over the Internet from overseas media images and Chinese-language press, sources said, anti-foreign anger engulfed the Web. Netizens could read and watch in plain view what they were not being told.

The Chinese leadership took note. After the London leg, the sources said, Chinese media organs received orders from on-high to fangkai wangluo, fangkai minjian – code for “open up the Web, open up public opinion.” That order hit in the nick of time for the Paris leg, where demonstrators lunged at paraplegic torchbearer Jin Jing. This time, the handful of officially designated outlets of international news reported the scene, most notably the Global Times, a staunchly patriotic, often polemical newsstand tabloid published by the People’s Daily. Its file from Paris got top billing on the mainland news portals. Soon people were clamoring for boycotts and protests against the French hypermarket Carrefour. But in fact, Carrefour became a target somewhat by happenstance. “The Paris protests were not really bigger than London but the backlash here was much, much bigger,” said one of the sources. “Because they were publicized.”

As soon as domestic protests threatened to spiral onto the streets, though, the government began tightening the few mainland spigots of overseas news on the torch relay. Clashes in South Korea were the last to be featured. By the time of the Japan leg the taps were turned off, just before Hu was to make a historic trip there.

The torch relay to-do seems to have shown the leadership that a few carefully parsed nuggets of fresh reporting can work more powerfully than decades of patriotic government rhetoric. “They definitely feel their propaganda strategy was ultimately successful,” commented one of the Party media sources. Domestically, since at least as early as late April, the Party leadership has conceived the publicity war over Tibet and the torch relay as a victory over the dreaded nightmare of “peaceful evolution” – shorthand for Western-style democratization and the peaceful overthrow of the Party. “The torch relay completely failed in its original aims” – that is, displaying before the world China’s benevolent progress – “but they won a much bigger victory, and this victory was not expected at all,” explained another Party media source. “Many young people got to see up close that the West is not always so friendly, that the West’s peaceful evolution was not such a good thing.” He added: “Two decades of patriotic education could not make the same impact.”

At one recent meeting, sources said, Li opined that the Party had faced the greatest risk of “peaceful evolution” when the “third” or “fourth generation” of Red babies born since the Communist takeover in 1949, i.e. in the 60’s and 70’s, came of age. That danger passed in the 1980’s and 90’s, and the Party survived. With the fifth and sixth generations, born in the 80’s and 90’s and coming of age today, Li said there was “basically not a chance [of peaceful evolution].”

So there you have it. More on China’s Olympic media game plan to come in future posts…

More Blasts Out West: How Big is the Terrorist Threat?

2008-08-04T11:39:25Z

This morning’s attack, which killed 16 police in the far western region of Xinjiang, did not exactly surprise me, but it may have startled at least one senior official from the area, Kerexi Maihesuti. Just last Friday in a Beijing press conference for foreign media the vice chairman of the Xinjiang region described the threat of ethnic Uighur separatists there as a disorderly band of wanna-be’s “with limited power” who are “not competent make the attacks which some hostile forces wish".

Are authorities dangerously downplaying the threat? Well, not always. A People’s Daily editorial last month warned grimly that “The Beijing Olympics is facing a terrorist threat unsurpassed in Olympic history.” With such mixed signals – and the Beijing Olympics just days away – Chinese Netizens are buzzing with questions and speculation about the most recent incident. What seems clear – perhaps the only thing that’s truly clear – is that already stringent security precautions in China’s capital will no doubt become tighter still.

　This morning Web postings on an Internet bulletin board popular with IT professionals revealed surprise, alarm, and conspiracy theories. One post starts out “F---! Xinjiang attacked by bombs. 16 armed police died, 16 injured. CCTV just reported it” and goes on to describe the 7:55 AM incident in which two vehicles tried to ram a group of People’s Armed Police engaged in their routine morning exercises, including jogging in formation. The drivers threw two grenades and slashed their victims with knives. “Terror” says one respondent. Update: later official reports said there was only one vehicle, a dump truck of all things.
　
　A person using the cybernym Orion frets “I was even thinking of driving to Xinjiang in August. It’s not safe even in a non-Games region.” To which another Netizen says “They’re too bold, even picking on the border troops. It looks like the border troops don’t have enough fighting force, so many died and injured.”
　
　 Then someone posts a news report of the press-conference comments made by Kerexi Maihesuti saying the East Turkistan separatists aren’t as powerful as reported by some media. “When I watched this news the day before yesterday, I realized the terrorists wouldn’t let this go,” says William920. “They did this because of that news,” agrees Eggcom. “Was Kerexi Maihesuti bragging or [public security personnel] not doing their jobs?” Concludes another, “Obviously it was not appropriate for him to give those comments at that moment.”

　To be sure, the deadly incident in Kashgar – an ancient Silk Road oasis town in Xinjiang where Muslim Uighurs are the largest single ethnic group – has not been proven (yet) to have been the work of separatists aspiring to establish an independent “East Turkistan”. But the official Xinhua news agency said the incident was “suspected to be a terrorist attack”. Xinhua said local public security department officials received intelligence that the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement would seek to disrupt the Games or their run-up with attacks between Aug. 1 and 8. ETIM is a categorized as a terrorist group by both the U.S. and Chinese governments though its size, effectiveness, and viability is a source of much debate.
　
　　 In other words, Uighur separatists have presented Beijing with a public-relations dilemma: is it better to scoff at them as incompetents, or hype them as a major security threat? At the moment we’re getting both messages, which leaves the public (and the foreign media) somewhat suspicious of official statements on the situation in restive Xinjiang.
　
　For months Chinese authorities have cited a number of foiled Muslim extremist plots to tarnish the Olympics, including a scheme to blow up an airplane and kidnap foreign visitors and media. Hence the Hongqi 7 missile batteries set up near the Olympic competition venues. Last month, in a video released on the Internet, a militant group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party promised to “target the most critical points related to the Olympics” and claimed responsibility for recent bomb blasts in Kunming, Shanghai and other cities. (The group is believed to be based in Pakistan which borders Xinjiang.)
　
　I’m waiting to see how that plays out. Sixteen dead in a terrorist attack is an extremely high number for China, the most deadly in years.(Another 16 police were injured). Then again, Kashgar is 4,000 kilometers away from Beijing, where the intensity of security inspections, credentialling, and surveillance are already unprecedented. After living here for a decade, this is the first time I’ve seen helicopters over my residential compound, except for a ceremonial fly-past during the National Day parade rehearsal in 1999 (which doesn’t count). While entering the Olympics media center yesterday my wedding ring set off the medal detection device, which was a first for me and suggested perhaps the settings were a tad sensitive. I’m still not sure whether to be reassured, amused or annoyed.

China's 'Finest News Source'

2008-08-03T12:24:03Z

Yesterday we brought you the Extrauterine Pregnancy Express, journalist-blogger Chen Feng’s Oniony news parody on Beijing’s Olympic prep work. The unseemly title, as was explained in the post, derives from a punning Chinese nickname for the Games that's been creeping around the blogosphere (Gongwaiyun). Chen bashed out his cycle of mock dispatches in a flurry on Thursday. When complimented on his wry wit, he could only scoff back. “What’s so creative about it!”

Anyway, translated herewith is another installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Two

The government announced today that they will require Beijing citizens to share one kitchen knife for every five households, so as to ensure 100-percent safety during the Gongwaiyun [read: Olympics]. When not in use, the kitchen knife is to be placed in a fixed location under the protection of a specially appointed individual. It will be subjected to random inspection. Migrants will have to share one kitchen knife for every ten households, and must have a Beijing resident as a guarantor in order to use it.

When in use, the knife’s user along with the purpose and length of use must be registered, and a record must be kept with local urban management personnel. Users must re-apply when using the knife over the appointed period of use.

Asked by a reporter why such stringent regulations were being introduced, a Gongwaiyun spokesperson noted that during the period 2008 Beijing Olympics, security checks are being carried out on cars from other places entering the city, and knives the least bit large are not allowed to be brought in. But on taking into account that every single household in the city owns knives, some sharper and bigger than those being restricted, the government decided on this measure, using Yuan Dynasty controls on knives as a reference.

Not enough? Here's a bonus installment:

Extrauterine Pregnancy Express Number Four:

The government is considering more stringent measures during the period of the Gongwaiyun, in order to ensure environmental protection efforts pass muster, a spokesman announced today.

The spokesman expressed outrage at the ulterior motives of some foreign media, who've criticized Beijing's recent spectacular skies as environmental pollution. He stated, “The inability to see clearly is a kind of misty beauty, and by no means represents poor air quality.” Citing one example, he said, “In a bathhouse you can’t see clearly. That’s called steam, not pollution.” Citing another example, he said, “On the moon you can see clearly. You think air quality there is good?”

He also said, however, that in order to enable the broad masses of foreign nationals to fully understand our level of commitment to the slogan “One World, One Spring Dream,” in addition to the recent orders to halt production at a greater number of enterprises, the government will consider restricting all people considered "Three Have-nots" (no power, no money, no background) from driving their vehicles, except for those whose license plate numbers do not end in odd or even digits. "Three Have-not" enterprises will only be allowed to operate after 25:00 in the evening.

Asked by a reporter what would be done if results cannot be effectively achieved on time, the spokesman said with a mysterious smile, “The government have already identified the largest source of pollution, and will adopt stringent measures to control it.”

The government’s stringent measures, sources have revealed, will include a ban on farting by the "Three Have-not" people. Violators will be fined.

Chinese Olympics Blogging: Comedy Sports on the Web

2008-08-02T11:41:55Z

Beijing's standout bloggers (like its natives) are an intrinsically grouchy lot. No surprise then that they’ve been griping on and on about Olympic-related hassles of late – though in many cases more offline than on.

“Achhhh, we’ve been spending half our days erasing posts,” groused the founder of one of China’s edgier blog forums, reached by phone earlier this week. Come Olympic time, he said, “I’m not even sure we’ll be operating.” He asked not to be named and declined to elaborate. “Please don’t ask me to talk about it.” (His site, incidentally, is still up.)

“I can’t really say what I want, so I’m not writing much at all,” carped a fellow blogger over an iced cappuccino a couple days later. A journalist with a large online cult following, he was planning to flee Beijing for China’s deep south to take care of some unfinished reporting during the Games. The shortage of non-Olympic-related cultural activity permitted in the months beforehand, he said, had left him with far less than usual to cover. He too declined to be named. “Please, don’t make things harder for me.”

Members of the foreign press corps arriving in town this week also are coming to grips with the reality that they won’t have completely “free and unfettered access” to the Internet during the Games, contrary to what Beijing Olympics organizers and their International Olympic Committee counterparts seemed to have promised. What a shocker. Welcome to Beijing!

The bigger surprise came Friday afternoon, when Beijing unblocked a number of sites after hashing out a new deal with the IOC (which later denied there was ever a previous “deal” sanctioning censorship). The unblocked sites include those of organizations the government has long treated as its personal nemeses: Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and the BBC’s Chinese service. Meanwhile those of others deemed “subversive” enemies of the state, like Falun Gong and the Free Tibet Campaign, figure to remain off-limits.

The Great Firewall of China can actually make for a thrilling tour, once you get used to the bumps. The unacquainted visitor may learn the lessons of forbearance and a handy tip or two from Beijing’s subculture of dark-humored bloggers, mostly thirty or forty-something and male. For them, playing volleyball with Web forum monitors and Internet filterers is a daily exercise. Their sociopolitical commentary can get them into serious trouble with the law, granted, but for most the consequences seldom amount to more than getting a blog shut down, at which point they decamp to a new hosting site. Through some sick perversion of Confucian dynamics, the whole gambit cultivates in many a sense of make-do kinship with Communist Party speech police, along with an abiding awareness of what is and isn’t politically correct. This is not all that unlike the way a grounded adolescent resents the “old man”, or a p-whipped husband the “ball-and-chain”.

Officialdom is projecting some serious Olympic harmony over the Internet, at least on the surface, via the home pages of China’s major private Internet portals (QQ, Sina, Sohu, Netease), which have been carrying strikingly similar firey-hued background motifs. Many official billboards look about the same. Hmmm.

The pressures on dissent have inspired the blogosphere to new feats of linguistic gymnastics. So as to deride by indirection and escape the radar of post scrubbers (not to mention humorless patriots), bloggers are up to their old tricks again. They're trying farce, spoof and other forms of couched criticism, rearranging compound words and entire blocks of text, and in particular, coining various snide twists on the Chinese for Olympic Games, ao yun (奥运) for short.

Many of these turns of phrase have multipile interpretations. Keyword filters have not caught up with them. There’s nao yun (闹运), which could be defined as “troublesome Olympics”, the “make-trouble Olympics” or just plain “no Olympics”. And there's bi yun （避运), literally to “shun” or “avoid the Games”, is also a homophone for the Chinese for contraception, and thus a dig at the snug wrap of security over the Games. Ergo a biyuntao, or condom, is the current tourism industry slang for a "package to avoid the Games". The blogger heading South may be about to head on one.

I myself am partial to an expression that I began using on my own: ao yun (熬晕), as in 我熬晕了, which in my mind roughly translates: “I’m so sick of the Games I could faint.” My Chinese friends generally don’t seem to get at first. Maybe that's because of the tonal discrepancy with the ao yun for Olympics. More likely, it's just not that funny.

On Thursday, the acclaimed journalist Chen Feng took to blogging a series of Olympic news satire named for yet another derogatory expression for the Games, the gong wai yun （恭外运）. Literally, the coinage is an abbreviation for an “event where foreign athletes are respectfully received.” Alternately, it’s a homophone for “extrauterine pregnancy”.

Chen pegs every dead-pan installment of the Gongwaiyun Express to some breaking news item about Beijing’s preparations. The security and environmental stopgaps are favored targets of ridicule.

Here’s Gongwaiyun Express No. 1, which Chen wrote after the city urged subway passengers to leave their bags behind:

"Authorities are bolstering subway security checks to ensure security during the Gong wai yun [read: Olympics]. In order to avoid congestion caused by security checks, relevant officials have urged the public not to wear clothes when taking the subway.

A reporter asked whether the measure would cause inconvenience to the public, questioning why such a strict measure was being introduced.

A Gongwaiyun spokesmen acknowledged that this would cause the public to feel inconvenienced, but pointed out that the during the 2008 Beijing Olympic period, authorities already have been urging the public not to carry bags when taking the subway. The spokesman noted that it is commonplace as well as necessary for the public to carry bags when they go out. Since the Beijing Olympics can still urge the public not to carry bags, there is also nothing wrong with urging them not to wear clothes.

The spokesman also pointed out that not carrying bags would in reality not resolve issues of security. It is entirely possibly for terrorists to conceal bombs in the crotch of their pants. So in order to ensure that the Gongwaiyun is 100 percent safe, it is only proper for the public to sacrifice some convenience. It’s a noble act accommodate the Gongwaiyun."

Look for more kicks from the Gongwaiyun Express to come in further posts on this blog.

Meanwhile, Chen has been doing some serious thinking about Olympic developments as well. A career muckraker, he won fame for his 2003 scoop of the death of a young graphic designer named Sun Zhigang, which fueled a media uproar that led the government to abolish the 20-year-old procedure by which migrants without proper residential permits could be held in detention centers and forcibly repatriated. After stints as a senior editor at The Beijing News and Sohu.com’s news channel, he’s now with the financial news portal Hexun, where he also keeps his blog. He calls it 'Journalistic Education' (新闻性教育), itself a flick of whimsy at the Advanced Education, Communist Party chief Hu Jintao’s 2005 propaganda campaign to reinvigorate the Party ranks and reincorporate basic Party values. Versions 1.0 and 2.0 of Chen’s 'Journalistic Education' were eventually shut down. The Hexun version is 3.0.

Recently, Chen revealed over noodle stir-fry, his own Web site rubbed out a couple of his more scathing entries on the Olympics. He responded by reposting them using vertical typesetting. The classic form of printing Chinese has become a tool for Netizens to circumvent censorship, and it’s not as much trouble as it looks, Chen noted. “There are programs to do this for you.”

Chen’s post from July 13 opens:

│屋│七│　│浪│就│　│性│人│执│太│都│，│抢│太│理│桥│今│　│然│前│
│﹂│旬│　│的│因│　│？│到│法│太│要│在│没│，│了│下│天│　│后│天│
│　│老│　│自│为│　│　│底│者│，│被│桥│骗│都│。│的│新│　│来│来│
│　│太│　│由│奥│　│　│有│的│可│清│下│，│７│这│流│京│　│了│了│
│　│告│　│都│运│　│　│没│妈│以│出│有│靠│０│位│浪│报│　│抓│查│
│　│别│　│没│，│　│　│有│妈│当│去│一│捡│了│拾│户│又│　│狗│暂│
│　│桥│　│有│我│　│　│一│的│这│，│个│废│，│荒│也│刊│　│的│住│
│　│下│　│了│们│　│　│点│，│些│这│小│品│没│的│要│出│　│。│证│
│　│小│　│。│连│　│　│点│这│所│位│窝│为│偷│老│被│来│　│　│的│
│　│﹁│　│　│流│　│　│人│帮│谓│老│，│生│没│太│清│，│　│　│，│

Translation:

"The day before last they came to check temporary residency permits. Then they came to capture the dogs.

Now today The Beijing News is reporting that the vagrants under the overpasses are going to be cleared out as well. This old lady who collects scrap, she’s 70 years old, she hasn’t stolen or looted or swindled, she survives off of picking up waste, she has a tiny nest underneath an overpass, and even she has to be cleared out. This old lady could be the mother of these so-called executors of the law. Do these guys not possess one shred of humanity?

Just because of the Olympics, even our freedom to be vagrants is gone…"

About-Face on the Internet (plus tips in case it doesn't last)

2008-08-01T10:59:08Z

There’s a new game in town. The screeching halt, 180 degree Politburo about-face has such a high degree of difficulty that the sport is rarely held – and never rehearsed – except during extremely important, internationally scrutinized public events. Like the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

Which is why Chinese authorities today abruptly allowed access to previously blocked websites such as those of Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders. This occured after the eruption of a bruising controversy when foreign media arriving to cover the Games were dismayed to discover they couldn’t reach dozens of sites related to sensitive groups such as the banned Falun Gong religious movement, Free Tibet activists, and other organizations critical of Beijing and its policies. Sites that host thousands of Chinese blogs have also been affected by the Net clampdown. (update: as of Saturday the Falungong and Free Tibet sites remained blocked, though other sensitive sites such as Amnesty's were still accessible in the Olympics media center.)

Chinese citizens have lived with such Web interference for years, of course. But Chinese authorities and high-level IOC officials continually reassured the world in the run-up to the Olympics that IOC-accredited journalists covering the Games would not encounter Internet censorship. Once foreign journalists began squawking about blocked websites earlier this week, the it's-all-going-to-work-out-just-you-wait facade began to crack. IOC Press Commission head Kevan Gosper apologized for the Net hassles and said the IOC had "negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis that they were not considered Games-related." But early Friday morning Beijing time – VERY early, like around 1:00 AM – the IOC faxed around a press release saying that senior IOC figures were holding discussions with Chinese counterparts about the Web problems – and that “the IOC would like to stress that no deal with the Chinese authorities to censor the internet has ever in any way been entered into.” By Friday afternoon, sensitive sites began to open up.

OK, so now we’ve seen an IOC reversal and then Beijing’s backtracking. What other public-relations gymnastics are in store, with the Games opening ceremonies just a week away? At least China got a break on one unrelated front: the weather. Suddenly after weeks of rain and cloud and murk, Beijing's skies suddenly cleared -- to the extent that that my colleague Jon Ansfield thinks Beijing should simply start the Olympics now, early, to take advantage of the glorious weather. Enjoy it while you can – it may not last.

Which brings me back to China's Internet cops. In case you’re wondering if China’s loosening of Net restrictions are the beginning of the end to Web censorship here, my answer is: don’t dump those VPN’s and proxy servers just yet. In case the current relaxation doesn’t expand as hoped, here’s some info on navigating the Internet compiled by the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China. (Full disclosure: I’m a former FCCC president and helped publish its recently released “Reporters’ Guide” with insider tips on how to deal with reporting challenges here on the ground):

Virtual Private Network (VPN). As the name suggests, these are secure, private networks that run through the public Internet. This gives them the benefit of bypassing China’s Internet monitoring and censorship systems. Many corporations use VPN systems to allow employees to access company e-mail remotely; if you work for one of them, you probably will not need other tools for accessing e-mail and blocked websites. For others, there are a number of off-the-shelf technologies that can easily create VPNs. For explanations of what a VPN is see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN or http://www.howstuffworks.com/vpn.htm

VPN software and services:

·Paid

http://www.witopia.net/personalmore.html

http://www.hotspotvpn.com/

http://www.publicvpn.com/

·Free / advertising-supported

http://anchorfree.com/downloads/hotspot-shield

Other tools for private/secure Internet access

· Gladder (an add-on for the Firefox browser)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2864

·Tor

http://www.torproject.org/index.html.en

·Psiphon

http://psiphon.civisec.org/

· Anonymizer

http://www.anonymizer.com/

·Proxify

https://proxify.com/

Secure email

·Web e-mail

Gmail. Accessing gmail via https:, rather than the usual http: connection creates a secure connection for e-mail, and should be your default option. The added "s" means secure.

* https://mail.google.com/mail/

Hushmail. A service offering web-based email encrypted with PGP technology (see below).

* https://www.hushmail.com/

·PGP email. The open-source standard Pretty Good Privacy allows for high-level encryption of e-mail sent through standard desktop e-mail software. This prevents anyone intercepting the e-mail from being able to read it.

Explanations

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

* Phil Zimmerman, inventor of PGP: http://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/background/index.html

Software

* http://www.pgpi.org/

* http://www.gnupg.org/

* http://www.winpt.org/

* http://www.cgeep.com/

New Subway Line #10: Beijing's Great Democratizer?

2008-07-31T09:23:55Z

Ning Ning, a 26-year-old from Urumqi who moved to Beijing for a Master's painting program at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts, is excited. The city's newly opened Line 10 subway brings other parts of the city closer to her, faster, than ever before: “I just want to ride around and explore with my friends!” Generally considered a private city whose hulking outer shell is tough to penetrate, the expanded underground—which opened Saturday, July 19—is making China's capital more accessible and, yes, possibly more democratic in the one area of public administration that touches virtually every resident nearly every day: transportation.

The varied territory covered by Line 10—a 25-kilometer, 22-station long inverted ‘L’ shaped route that traces the East Third Ring Road north-south and then tacks east-west—is a crash course in understanding Beijing as a city. The train travels from the ancient universe of Panjiayuan market's old-world curios in the city’s southeast to the Haidian hangouts of youth and high-tech in the far northwest—with the Central Business District (CBD), Embassy compounds, and Sanlitun entertainment quarter in between.

Formerly a 90-minute car ride (even when traffic is light, mind you), the journey can now be covered in under 40 minutes. It was launched as part of a progressive transportation package in time for the Olympics which also boasts the Airport Express elevated train and the 4-stop Olympic Park line. Moving around the city during the Games has been transformed further by anti-pollution measures that include alternating driving days for even and odd numbered car license plates and banning industrial vehicles that don't meet emissions standards.

For Ning Ning and friends, wandering about the city just for curiosity's sake “in the past was just too far, wasted so much time.” Ning Ning also fretted that “we wouldn’t know how to get back home,” which is something many in Beijing feel. Here, citizens must contend with street names constantly under revision, new thorough-fares that sprout up in just weeks, and whole neighborhoods disappearing in the time it takes one to return from a business trip. “In order to get around,” explained Annie, a 30-something administrative assistant who traveled from her office in the CBD to the Haidian Hospital in the technology hub of Zhongguancun, “you had to spend time figuring out what combination of buses and taxis to take to get around. Now, it will be much easier.”

Opaque is one way to describe travel through Beijing transport. Michael Armstrong, an American who writes a bi-weekly local column focusing on the expatriate experience and who has lived in Beijing for three years, thinks of the Chinese capital “as a bunch of little villages—and people just stay within their own townships.” The center of town is circumscribed by the circular subway Line 2, and Line 1 traces east-west artery Chang’an Avenue; Line 5 travels north-south through this central area. With the launch of line 10, those not living along one of these main thoroughfares can now connect with the sites and neighborhoods that made Beijing famous.

One of Line 10's most important connections joins Zhongguancun, the tech hub, with the CBD, which thereby connects multinational business offices with programmers and web technicians. Sean, a 25 year-old real estate agent, works in the CBD and is finding his weekly visit to Zhongguancun to arrange housing for such web wizards much easier. He can fit in more showings per day, since he spends less time in traffic. Even though he isn’t top management at his company, he now rides in comfort and just as quickly—if not more so—to his meetings. “This new train, it makes the city more modern, since more people can use it.”

A Line 10 stop is also near to both Renmin and Beijing Foreign Languages Universities, from which many interns and young employees are drawn to work in CBD businesses. Many of these students also intern or ultimately work as local staff in foreign Embassies, which can now easily be reached by transferring to Line 2. Alyssa, a sophomore at the latter school, said she and her friends took the train the first day it opened to test it out, and “found it especially helpful to go to the Embassy District, where we hope to work.”

The Line 10 connection to Sanlitun and the Worker’s Stadium area, where a throng of bars and restaurants are based, will permit youth to gather and meet up at night. In the past, Ning Ning says she wouldn’t go out there before, because it was so far away. But now “sure! I’ll probably go out a lot more, go see my friends, so we can go drinking.” For people living in the south-eastern part of town, like Paul Scaini, a Canadian 27 year-old, going out to dine in this entertainment district took up too much time and expense; now, he says the new line will connect him to the area more quickly.

Another reservoir of Beijing's youthful energy is the southeastern Shuangjing area, nearby Panjiayuan market. People who can’t afford to live at Guomao, in the middle of the CBD and near the China World Hotel, can live just two stops away and pay half the price for housing -- which is exactly what Scaini discovered when looking for an affordable home enabling him to commute to his software start-up’s office in Zhongguancun. Likewise, Sophie, an American web designer, and her husband Tianli, a Chinese filmmaker, found a place near Panjiayuan because of the cheap rent -- and in anticipation of the planned subway line. Although traditionally this has been an area of town largely populated by the elderly, Line 10 means young Chinese looking for cheaper housing don’t sacrifice access to the city.

The Guomao stop on Line 10, with OMA-designed CCTV towers in the background, is smack in the middle of the Central Business District...

Beijing's charming old hutong neighborhoods are increasingly overcome by modern gated compounds or massive skyscrapers set off from the street, both of which seem impenetrable to outsiders. Subway stops, in this context, are important as “a point of reference,” explained Armstrong. They can lessen the intimidation of a new destination. With Line 10, Beijingers have the tools to travel to new parts of town and expand their horizons from there.

A university student, Sean finally went out to visit some good school friends near Bagou, the last stop on Line 10. “I have friends who live there, but I’ve never seen their homes before. I finally got to do that.” In the past, Ning Ning said her friends were too overwhelmed by the idea of finding her apartment in the far northwest corner of Beijing. “Now, with Line 10, people are saying, ‘there’s a subway out there, that’s not so bad.’“

More of Beijing has suddenly become accessible, yes—that is what any subway aims to accomplish. But in a city where life is lived concealed within towering skyscrapers along gaping avenues or hidden behind the walls of winding alleyways, the extension of the subway system makes it more democratic. One no longer depends on insider’s knowledge in order to navigate it.

The Suzhoujie stop on Line 10, in the Haidian university district...

The Tiananmen Paper

2008-07-31T01:43:40Z

It’s bad news for a mainland newspaper to let something slip about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Really bad news. The news only tends to get worse when the slip-up occurs at a time as delicate as now, with the Olympics days away and Beijing on tenterhooks about, among lots of other things, foreign TV broadcasts and tourists at Tiananmen Square. But one week after its well-publicized infraction, the propaganda-meisters remain eerily silent in the case of The Beijing News. Persons informed on the matter say it may very well stay that way until after the Games.

Last Thursday the paper, one of the country’s elite commercial dailies, ran an interview with Pulitzer Prize-decorated photographer Liu Heung Shing. Liu is the editor of a new coffee-table volume of photos that spans the tumultuous history of the People’s Republic (Newsweek’s Alexandra Seno profiled him last week). Much of the subject matter is politically tinged, including images of the Tiananmen demonstrations, the Cultural Revolution and previously unreleased shots by Chinese photojournalists. As a result the book is unlikely to be sold on the mainland, and some copies shipped in have been impounded by customs officials.

To accompany the interview in The Beijing News, Liu says, he e-emailed the paper three photos of his in the book, though he was cautious not to select any that would be too risky to publish. When the interview appeared, however, the spread of images featured a fourth he never sent, at the bottom corner of the page:

The Beijing News, July 24, 2008, Page C15

The corner photo, entitled “The Wounded”, was one Liu captured during the June 3-4, 1989 crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen. Its shows civilians pierced by bullets being wheeled away on tricycle carts.

Fourth Photo: 'The Wounded'

Word of the shot's publication traveled fast among Chinese politicos and media insiders, primarily over blogs and blocked overseas-based Chinese Web sites that mainlanders can reach by proxy or tunnel. Liu, who makes his home in a hutong of Beijing, was as miffed anyone by the photo. "I did not discuss what happened in 1989 during the entire interview, nor did the published story mention anything about it,” says the photographer and media executive, adding, “I have never received as many calls as [Thursday].”

At The Beijing News, alarm bells sounded first thing that morning. A pair of ranking editors at the paper got a call about the faux pas from a junior colleague, according to another Beijing-based journalist who spoke with them about it that day. Soon cadres from the paper’s co-parent and official sponsor organization, the Communist Party-published Guangming Daily, were ringing them about it as well. The paper made a last-ditch effort to withhold some copies of Thursday’s edition. But the bulk were already in the hands of newsstands and subscribers. It was too late to launch a systematic recall without causing a major stir, say this source and two other veteran journalists with close connections to the paper. The editors did manage to quietly disable the Web link to the story. But the next step was unavoidable: They would have file a report on the incident to Guangming, which would pass it up to the Party’s Central Publicity Department—the dreaded propaganda bureau.

The editors wrapped up their initial investigation into the matter swiftly. It did not take long for them to conclude that this was an unintended gaffe. There had been a missing hole in the layout. A fourth image was needed to fill it. So, the journalist sources were informed, a young layout editor simply scanned the Internet, lifted another image from Liu's book, and slotted it in—neglecting to consider what it was. The downloaded image had to be stretched to line it up with the others, says one of the journalists. Compared with print output of the three shots that he provided, Liu says, “You could notice the difference in the qualities.”

In the minds of the journalist sources, each of whom was independently briefed, there was scant doubt that the blunder was accidental as the paper claimed. Nearly two decades of enforced silence removed from “June 4th”, they explain, even many young people in Beijing have seen and heard next to nothing of the tragedy. The page editor responsible for the story about Liu is about 30 years old, which means he would have been just eleven in 1989, according to one of the journalists. “I myself was old enough to fully experience Tiananmen, but I didn’t notice [the photo] when I first saw it, either,” he says (incidentally, the same could be said for this writer and his family). At the nearby headquarters of Guangming, where the Party newsmen know far more than they are free to publish, most did not hear about the incident all day Thursday, let alone spot the offending photograph.

Propaganda officials appeared to have realized too that the pic, on Page 15 of the Culture section, was not easily identifiable. By Thursday's end, even after filing their mea culpa, The Beijing News editors hadn’t heard a word back from the Central Publicity Department, says the journalist who was in touch with them. The protracted silence was abnormal. They began to sense that with the Olympics just around the corner, perhaps the propaganda bosses might just let the matter be - for the time being, that is. As one of the journalists, informed about with the inner workings of the department, observed on Friday morning: “Right now they just want to stop this from spreading.”

Still, it was a very anxious weekend for the editors, says the journalist who spoke with them. By Friday morning, Hong Kong’s Ming Pao had come out with a report about the foul-up (translated excerpt here from ESWN). According its story, “authorities” ordered all copies of Thursday’s edition recalled from newsstands on learning of it, and a number of editors and reporters at the paper were expected to be disciplined over it. The portrayal of the recall was clearly overstated and that of disciplinary action seemed at very least premature. But it sent The Beijing News editors' stress levels skyward.

Over the weekend they went about firming up their internal investigation. An oblivious young editor’s error did not explain, for example, how the lapse bypassed vetting by the paper’s own chain of command. Less-than-intended Tiananmen references are known to elude the self-censorship process mainland media are obliged to perform. Last June, the Chengdu Evening News inadvertently printed a classified ad from an anonymous buyer that paid tribute to mothers of protesters killed in the crackdown. Three editors were fired as a result, according to reports. That was a mere classified ad in a provincial tabloid. This was The Beijing News.

The paper's top editors were themselves puzzled that their charges had not caught the photo, says one journalist. The page editor Chen Yuan, while young, is the author of well-received histories on the modern Chinese intellectual scene. And the senior editor who ultimately signed off on it was a ranking photojournalist at the paper.

To complicate matters, a few conspiracy theorists cropped up in the blogosphere. They submitted that someone at The Beijing News might have slipped in the image deliberately, in an act somehow motivated by the internal frictions at the paper.

There was no motive or any other evidence to support suspicions of an inside job, the editors concluded. Nonetheless, the paper’s controversial upbringing was relevant to their case.

It’s the product of a pioneering joint venture between an odd couple of partners: stodgy, cash-poor Guangming, which hasn't been considered on the vanguard of reformism since the Deng days; and the Guangzhou-based Southern Media Group, one of the country’s most enterprising and aggressive today. Savvy news and ad pros bred by Southern Metropolis, a cousin paper, have mostly run the show day to day from the start. But Guangming’s the official guardian and wields editorial and administrative veto power.

At the end of 2005, pressured by Party higher-ups over a mounting number of offending investigations and editorials, Guangming’s newly installed Party boss dismissed the top Nanfang editor Yang Bin. This prompted hundreds of infuriated staff to stage an impromptu walkout (most went out on binge of drinking and karaoke). A few of Yang’s lieutenant editors would have been sacked as well, if not for the backlash and talk of an all-out strike. Within weeks Guangming had appointed several of its own men to senior editorial posts, essentially to act as minders. Yang's lieutenants and many other original editors and senior staff ended up resigning. The paper shrank in pages, distribution and advertising suffered, and the renowned editorial and investigative pages slipped into a virtual coma for months. Over the past two years the editorials and daily news coverage have gradually rebounded, but the investigative reports seldom hit as hard as they once had.

Every Monday afternoon, the paper’s senior editors assemble for a weekly editorial meeting. This Monday, hours before the meeting, they got word that Guangming would be dispatching a special representative to brief them. “They thought the whip was coming,” says the journalist. But instead, the rep spent the time transmitting the “spirit” of recent Party pronouncements to study. Of the Tiananmen photo, not a word was uttered.

The paper's official account of the incident has now been circulated to both Party and governmental media authorities, say the journalists. Several editors have already offered their resignations over the snafu, they say. But as of mid-week, the topmost editors was telling them to wait for authorities to weigh in.

Almost certainly, a personnel shakedown is in store for the paper. But journalists with knowledge of the case now think it highly possible that authorities will wait until after the Olympics to take action. It's also possible, though far from certain, that the delay will translate into a lighter punishment from propaganda czars than would have been doled out otherwise, they say. "But they would be stupid to do it now," says one of the journalists.

“They wouldn’t want to give all the foreign journalists in Beijing reason to hype this thing,” another explains. “Especially after what happened there the last time they sacked people.”

Tennis Star Lindsay Davenport Unfazed by Pollution, Politics

2008-07-29T19:39:59Z

Recently Jennifer Conrad talked with U.S. tennis star Lindsay Davenport on the eve of Team USA's departure for the Beijing Games. Her report:

Although some high-profile players—such as French player Amelie Mauresmo and American Andy Roddick—have said they'll sit out the Olympics to get ready for the U.S. Open, American tennis star Lindsay Davenport (currently ranked 23 by the WTA) says she wouldn't miss the Beijing Games.

"I love being a part of something much different than just tennis. I am part of Team U.S.A. and a representative of my country," says Davenport , who will be playing for the U.S. along with the Williams sisters and her doubles partner Liezel Huber.

"The Olympics have always been a big part of my family, and I'm honored to take part," she adds. Davenport won a gold medal in singles in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics; her father played on the 1968 U.S. volleyball team.

Davenport has played in Beijing twice before, and she expressed concerns about the Beijing air quality in other interviews.

But when I asked, she said that while the air is a concern for all athletes, she thinks the city is doing all it can to clean up the pollution.

As far as the pro-Tibet and human rights protests in the lead-up to the Olympics, Davenport would rather not go there: "I feel like I'm an athlete, and I'm there to play. The Olympics are about goodwill. If my country deems that we should send a team, then I'll be there."

Although troubles with her right knee caused Davenport to sit out June's East West Bank Classic in California , she says her knee is on the mend. And this year has been a comeback for the 32-year-old, who gave birth to her first son, Jagger, last June. Since returning to the game late last year, she has won several smaller tournaments and played at this year's Australian Open and Wimbledon .

"My time is much more limited now, but I enjoy playing tennis more," she says. "It's more fun, and I feel more down-to-earth."

To bounce back into playing shape after her son was born, she focused on staying healthy and eating well while she was pregnant. "I really thought it was the most important time of my life to be as healthy as I could. In the first few months after my son was born, exercise actually helped me to feel less tired and gave me an outlet to be with my thoughts."

After having her baby, Davenport wanted to look better too; she recently became a spokesperson for the wrinkle-filler Juvederm. "I saw some pictures of myself shortly after my son was born and didn't like what I saw—I thought I looked like I was in my mid to late 40s," she explains, adding that she thinks that playing tennis outdoors since she was a kid has taken a toll on her skin.

(Full disclosure: this interview was arranged by Juvederm on condition her use of products be mentioned; whatever else the Beijing Games turn out to be, the Olympics remain a major vehicle for corporate sponsors.)

"It does feel like women in our sport are way more scrutinized for our appearance than in other female sports. I don't know if this is because we wear short skirts or that we have been around so long."

Having her picture snapped with her son after she wins a big match has become a tradition for Davenport—and certainly she must hope for another photo op this August.

Q&A: Green Forum, Not-So-Green Games

2008-07-27T15:56:13Z

The goal of a “Green Olympics”, to Beijing’s chagrin, has become just another green light to have a go at its environmental woes. It is hard to hold back. After all, water is being pumped into a man-made addition to a parched riverbed, just to hold the Olympic rowing regatta. A reeking lather of algae docked on the shores of sailing host city Qingdao last month, requiring more than 10,000 workers to remove it. China's weather mod squad – officially, the ‘Weather Modification Office' – conducts constant aerial experiments in man-made rain to cool the cities and clear the skies. And the only thing less transparent than the air seems to be Beijing’s air pollution testing, which critics say is configured to lowball the numbers. Some Olympic runners are swooping into town for the days of their events alone, so leery are they of the haze. They’ll come muzzled in super-sophisticated masks.

The government's had to pull out all the stops - ordering half the cities' cars off the road (alternating daily bans on even- and odd-numbered license plates), closing factories, and shutting down construction - in the mere hope of making Beijing appear a less forbidding city.

So acute are the problems, however, that China’s also opened up to all sorts of innovative efforts at fixing them. At one newly established forum in Beijing earlier this month, environmental experts, green business gurus and grassroots activists pondered the future of the “environmental economy”. We emailed with Richard Marks and Sophia Trapp of Productions 1000, co-founders of the “International Earth Forum” (IEF), about China's prospects of improving a grim environment and their own challenges operating in a toxic climate of pre-Olympic security. Excerpts from our e-interview follow:

NEWSWEEK: Tell us what the International Earth Forum is and how it came about.

We brought together a mix of communicators, connectors, forestry experts, business people, renewable energy & carbon trading leaders, academic and youth leaders from the UK, US, Netherlands, Germany and China. Our core discussions centered around the theme of leadership within the new “environmental economy”, in which attendees asked, “How can we do Business with Nature?”

Why China?

Four years ago, China invited us into early discussions about the urgency for addressing its serious energy concerns. That first renewable energy business delegation brought us face-to-face with senior government leaders from Shanghai to Beijing to discuss renewable technologies, investment and long range environmental planning, sustainable development in China, clean energy technologies and policy planning for the protection of China’s environment.

To organize the International Earth Forum, we partnered with senior level Chinese business people and government officials to connect re-forestation projects with international venture partners. But as we proceeded, we realized the importance of communicating fresh international and inter-cultural thinking. We all want to know what China is doing about the environment. In addition, our third co-host, Jing Su, is a young Chinese woman who has undertaken to help the environment by bridging the gap between China and the international community on environmental ideologies and practices. She is now the China Program Associate for the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).

Timing-wise, why did you choose the run-up to the Beijing Olympics?

Planning an international event in the run-up to the Olympics was an obvious opportunity to celebrate and communicate the positive changes happening in China, to share common ideas and desires for sustainability, and discuss how doing business that is good for the environment can be profitable and healthy. In a dialogue, people coming from different backgrounds typically have different basic assumptions and opinions. In the course of our dialogues, we seek to question our assumptions, set them aside, and are willing to set them free if we find we can do better with the words and ideas that will light the way for others.

But the Olympics hasn’t made for the freest of times here. Plus conferences in China normally require local partners and official approvals. Yet you managed to avoid all that. How and why?

In the beginning, Productions 1000 was eager to partner with a Chinese environmental NGO that wanted its organization to be recognized as the host; otherwise "it wasn't interested." We had to hold firm that it's an inappropriate role for an NGO to host a business-oriented forum. We decided to risk it and continue on our own. Launching for the first time in China, it was touch and go until the end.

Through two years of relationship-building with private sector environmental business ventures in China, we had made friends with business people and NGO’s in China. Our idea to bring international people to the table required an agenda that would be communications-driven, so our approach was to remain a private and social gathering – an invitation-only event. This ensured the integrity of doing business while protecting the exposure to our guests, many of whom are CEO’s and presidents of significant venture funds for the environment.

While the original people we felt we needed to work in China did not stay along for the ride, some very senior government and business people working in China's environmental space ultimately gave us the "nod" to allow it to happen [on an unofficial basis]. We feel that’s because they recognized we are good people who had something good to contribute to China's environment and people.

Greening the guanxi: Trapp, Marks, Su and fellow participants

Can you fill us in on some other stumbling blocks you encountered, and the adjustments you had to make?

A drawback of holding the forum [IEF] independently was the suggestion that guests trying to get their visas to enter China for any 'official' gatherings would not be allowed. Actually that was helpful to know up front. We therefore made sure that even though our agenda would be on relevant subjects for China's environment, our format was a more social one. We steered away from the word 'conference' and recommended that speakers and guests enter on tourist visas, rather than business visas.

Another tricky moment happened when we met with quite a high ranking official a week before the event and he wanted to discuss our guest list with us. It was surprising when the decision was made that he would not be attending after all, apparently because we had a number of younger people coming. We had a tough decision to make, but in the end we remained true to our vision that if the environmental situation in China -- and therefore the world -- is going to be solved it will be because all ages are in the room together. It paid off in spades but we were tested. The easier road would have been to back down and we would have had any number of high government officials coming. In the end, a few government officials attended to hear what the IEF was about and saw how successful it was. We hope they will all be there again next year.

How did the some of the changes you had to make going in ultimately affect the event?

We originally planned a forum that would bring Chinese business opportunities to international business leaders together, but the IEF evolved into a gathering of frontier-thinkers deeply interested not just in doing green business, but for people who wanted to be exposed to a deeper understanding about positive opportunities for doing business that will improve China’s – and the world’s – environment. It wasn’t just about making “a lot of noise”, as one senior-level invitee remarked, but about “making the right kind of noise”. The recent tragic earthquake also helped to reinforce the message that people together discover ways to help one another across all political and environmental lines.

How did things go? What did you learn? Highlights?

Beautifully, we thought. The IEF was an eye-opener for people who made the journey. For a number of people, this was their first time in China. For some, rapid changes have transformed China since they were here last.

The highlight was making new friends, the most important thing to be working anywhere, but especially in China. The government people who are associated with NGO's in China recognized that we were mixing senior-level and youth leadership, which is not the ordinary structure in business-driven forums. And that was ultimately perhaps the most unique thing about its success.

In one dialogue session, we asked what people need to know about China in order to do green business. We learned – from an all-Chinese group of leaders - that “China is [a system of] governmental capitalism.” For example, [it’s the] government who is creating new policies for obligations of companies to recycle. Second, we learned that education (at the moment) works from the top-down. Government rules are far above the people and need to be more connected. Youths want [the message] to go out locally that “green isn’t always more expensive” – it’s not a luxury. Third, what’s needed to know about doing green business happens to be a universal business creed: working with good people is what one needs. NGO’s are good for advocacy but not for business.

Young leaders also expressed that they would like a ranking of companies for their “green-ness.” The right green information - and trust in that information - is missing. If that changes, then we’d see a positive consumer swing and people would be confident to start more green businesses. They also want to spread the thinking that “green equals change and opportunity” and that this message would help to create new jobs.

The European and American guests were truly impressed by the level of seriousness, talent and intelligence of the younger people. Likewise, some of China's best NGO's came along for the ride came. Among them, the directors of forestry for the World Wildlife Fund in China and Washington DC took notice of this opportunity, and introduced us to the Director General of the Department of International Cooperation at the Beijing Muncipal Bureau of Landscape and Forestry. They jumped into the IEF with two feet just days before it began, presenting in-depth and cutting-edge ideas not just about their solutions for the greening of Beijing prior to the Beijing Olympics, but also about their role in facilitating China's first carbon sequestration program launched this month.

You’re in the business of environmental consulting. So what about the “Green Olympics”? A lot of critics and reports still contend that it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Based on what you’ve observed in China and heard at the forum, what impact do you think the Olympics has made on environmental practices, whether positive or negative?

Isn't there a 'Blue-Sky Day' count that has been recorded for 10 years ... and statistically, according to the government, aren't there are twice as many blue days now than 10 years ago? But is the situation still bad? Yes. But are they doing something about it? Yes as well.

Is there a lot of 'green hype'? Yes of course. The whole world is going through green hype! All of a sudden your bank is 'green' because they send you your bill via email. They would have done that anyway, they are saving money doing so, but now all of a sudden they are 'green'!

The Beijing Olympic Committee set out to make some necessary changes and then oversell it as well as they could. That is the age we live in. But amidst all the hype there are people using this window of opportunity to enact real change and its a pity that they get attacked with all the rest. The Beijing Forestry Department of International Cooperation for example have put real science behind their improvement plans and have established the first carbon sequestration plan for any city in the world. That is something real.

In general the “Green Olympics” has helped expose certain relevant environmental issues such as energy saving, renewable energy, and the importance of air quality, so that it became a national discussion point. Now, as a result, some people are even more eager to make the ‘green’ dream a reality and that can only be a good thing in a country as motivated and resourceful as China is.

What would you do differently next year? What lessons did you learn? What advice would you give to other event organizers in China?

One important thing to know about the 'form' of the International Earth Forum is that we paid for it ourselves. Productions 1000 did not go for corporate sponsorship of any kind. We felt is was essential to keep the IEF independent, and now that we've done it this way, we feel it should remain independent. Three committed individuals made it happen. That's a story of personal commitment -- to actually doing something and not waiting for someone else to slow it down, stop it, weaken it, judge it beforehand, or make it beholden to ideas that might not be in line with the need for creating a new and necessary space for open dialogue and communication. And it allowed us to work without any strings attached with the government officials and NGO's whom we met initially.

The idea of the 'two day dinner party' had a more real effect than we could have known. You had to see the energy at the Forum to believe it. We are going to host the IEF again in Beijing next year to have even more people at the table and to push the discussions even further.

Beijing's "Blue" Skies

2008-07-24T19:28:15Z

I suppose it was inevitable.

After four days of (relatively) blue skies, the summer haze has descended once more upon Beijing. Nature's palette includes many lovely hues of blue: cerulean and cyan, turquoise and teal, azure and aqua; but the blue of a Beijing sky is seemingly indescribable and lies somewhere along the visible spectrum between tar heel pride and acid-washed jeans.

Granted, what we’re looking at today, Thursday, July 24 – a sky you can’t quite call overcast – is better than the polluted pall that usually hangs over our God-forsaken city. But still, it’s a sky the color of bed sheets that have been slept in too many times. Shadows lack defined edges. Visibility barely extends beyond the buildings across the street.

Which makes us wonder, will Beijing’s ambitious plan to reduce pollution in the capital ahead of the Olympics actually work?

Cars are only allowed to drive on alternating days according to whether their license plates end in odd or even numbers (on the first day, Sunday, July 20, odd-numbered vehicles stayed home). But there are significantly more cars with even-numbered plates in Beijing because Chinese people prefer digits ending in 6 or 8, which are considered lucky.

Traffic seems slightly reduced. But as someone who lives in an apartment overlooking the East Second Ring Road between Dongsishitiao and Chaoyangmen Bridges, I can tell you that congestion remains a significant impediment to progress for at least five hours a day (7:00AM to 10:00AM and 5:00PM to 7:00PM).

Part of the problem is Olympic lanes – specially designated thoroughfares that lead to and from the Olympic Village and Venues. But the lanes are poorly marked in most places, and a normal lane can suddenly become an Olympic lane without warning. This leads to bottlenecking delays as drivers hastily merge into other lanes rather than risk steep fines.

Those who aren’t on the roads use public transportation instead, and the opening of three new subway lines this past weekend was meant to mitigate the effects of a sudden influx of straphangers. But as someone who rides the subway every day, I can tell you that the trains are packed to capacity and the list of good manners and behaviors for the Chinese people is regularly flouted.

Blue skies are always a joy, yet with clarity comes concomitant heat. Beijing is burning up. But The Weather Channel's 10-day forecast appears to indicate we’ll be getting some much-needed, man-made rain early next week. Let’s hope it can wash away this haze and cool off the city’s cramped, cantankerous commuters.

Protest Parks: Democracy Walled?

2008-07-23T03:29:28Z

So maybe now we know whom the new security cameras in Ritan Park are really for...Yesterday, Beijing announced plans to set aside three city parks as protest zones during the Olympics: the World Park in Fengtai district, Purple Bamboo Park in Haidian, and the expat neighborhood park of Ritan, a biosphere of foreign journos, diplomats, and business people (along with Russian traders and retired cadres). "During the Olympics, in order to ensure a smooth traffic, nice environment and good social order, we would like to ask protesters to go to the designated parks," Liu Shaowu, security chief of the Beijing Olympic Games Organizing Committee, told a news conference.

But Shao failed to make clear who, how, or if anyone would be allowed protest within those parks, let alone anywhere else in town. Olympic rules forbid political and religious displays at the sporting venues. Chinese law prohibits any protests deemed a threat to national unity or social stability. It requires would-be protesters to apply in person before police five days in advance and provide details on the demonstrators and the nature of the demo in order to get the go-ahead – which is almost never granted. In many cases, the applicants have wound up preemptively detained.

When asked to detail the protest plan, Shao did not say what if any specials allowances would made inside the zones. He did imply that standard application procedures would still hold. “As long as the demonstration has passed approvals, Chinese police will protect the legal rights of the demonstrators to gather in accordance with the law,” he said.

He added that reporters would be getting details from other channels. But so far, nothing.

When news of three parks "specially provided for demonstrators to express themselves" first hit the portal Sina.com on Wednesday, courtesy of a brief report by the China News Service, Chinese readers cheered: "This should be expanded nationally," enthused one comment attached to the piece. "When there's pressure, there's progress," mused another. But on BOCOG's web site, the official transcript of the news conference omitted Shao's mention of the three parks and the question that prompted it. The Beijing News, a progressive, centrally-sponsored daily, did not name the parks either in its story the next day. The paper's headline called the parks "legal assembly sites".

For months, rumors percolated that Beijing would designate a park or two as protest sites. Officials eventually acted in part on the recommendations of scholars who lobbied for them, the AP reports. The so-called “protest pens” were used in Athens in 2004, and Beijing has experimented with them at least once before, at the U.N. Women’s Conference in 1995. But that took place in the suburb of Huairou, out in the sticks. “Several delegates used them,” notes Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org, “but they looked rather sad parading around a small, fenced-off patch of ground miles away from anywhere.”

This time the designated parks are considerably more convenient for the protesters and their target audience (us). None is near the Olympic Green where the major venues are concentrated. But Fengtai has been the stamping ground of nomadic communities of displaced hutong dwellers from the old city, as well as petitioners from around the country. Purple Bamboo Park rests amid the capital's main belt of universities. And the Ritan area is practically a foreign concession.

Authorities around Ritan have been on high-security alert in recent months (full disclosure: my wife and I run a cafe there.) Ritan is also designed to serve as an emergency base for the People’s Armed Police in case of a mass disturbance, as it was as recently as 2005, when Chinese protesters swarmed the Japanese embassy one block away. The Closed Circuit Television system was installed during the course of this spring, so now globed lenses peek through the trees over pathways.

Just last week, local police, park officials and State Security officers convened the most recent briefing on security arrangements in and around Ritan. At the meeting, they warned relevant establishments to be on guard against an array of unauthorized people and activities, because said persons and activities were variously regarded as threats to law and order, a “safe Olympics”, an image of “civility”, or the “national interests". The list of those fingered, as read back to us later, includes:

- large crowds and live performances

- excessively wild or "cuddly" partying

- illegal drug use

- “international prostitutes”

- fires, electrical accidents, and employees with criminal records

- the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong

- foreign journalists

Some of the authorities' instructions were phrased more elliptically than others, which is unfortunately typical. In the case of foreign journalists, for instance, their questions are supposed to be answered “prudently” so as to protect the nation's interests. In the words of our interlocutor, "We hope you can understand this."