Violent Unrest in China

This just in...

By HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: December 9, 2005


SHANGHAI, Dec. 9 - Residents of a fishing village near Hong Kong said that as many as 20 people had been killed by paramilitary police in an unusually violent clash that marked an escalation in the widespread social protests that have roiled the Chinese countryside. Villagers said that as many as 50 other residents remain unaccounted for since the shooting. It is the largest known use of force by security forces against ordinary citizens since the killings around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That death toll remains unknown, but is estimated to be in the hundreds.

The violence began after dark in the town of Dongzhou on Tuesday evening. Terrified residents said their hamlet has remained occupied by thousands of security forces, who have blocked off all access roads and are reportedly arresting residents who attempt to leave the area in the wake of the heavily armed assault.

"From about 7 p.m. the police started firing tear gas into the crowd, but this failed to scare people," said a resident who gave his name only as Li and claimed to have been at the scene, where a relative of his was killed. "Later, we heard more than 10 explosions, and thought they were just detonators, so nobody was scared. At about 8 p.m. they started using guns, shooting bullets into the ground, but not really targeting anybody.

"Finally, at about 10 p.m. they started killing people."

Radio piece for KQED's Pacific Time

Check it out--I did a radio story for Pacific Time (http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-landing.jsp?progID=RD37)
about the last group of Vietnamese boat people in the Philippines. Most of them will be resettled through a special humanitarian program, but a few hundred will be left behind for bureaucratic reasons.

It was a lot of fun to do radio. You have to approach the story slightly different, using your ears as much as your eyes. I'm hoping to incorporate more audio into my blog soon.

Vietnam ordains priests at historic event

Thousands of Vietnamese came out to witness a historic ordination of 57 Vietnamese priests by a Vatican envoy yesterday. It was the largest ordination ceremony for Vietnam. I spoke to local Catholics in San Jose about the ordination. There's a lot of excitement. According to the folks here, many of these priests are middle-aged and have been ministering covertly for years because of Vietnam's religious restrictions. The Vietnamese government has long insisted that it have the final say on church appointments.

It's a good development and is likely to help in softening Hanoi's image. Religious freedom is a big sticking point for the Vietnamese-American community, the largest outside of Vietnam.

Here's what I wrote for today's paper:

In San Jose, the ordination generated excitement as the news trickled out Tuesday among the city's 20,000 Vietnamese-American Catholics. ``We are very joyful and very proud,'' said Rev. Hien Minh Nguyen, vicar for Vietnamese ministry at the Diocese of San Jose, the second-largest Vietnamese-American Catholic community in the country. ``This is a sign of the vitality of the church of Vietnam after so much difficulty it has had to deal with.''

Nguyen said Vietnamese priests throughout the diocese will ``no doubt'' share the news with their parishioners at Mass today and this weekend.

``We've been anticipating this event with prayer,'' Nguyen said.

Let's talk about sex baby...

From conversations with young Chinese, I did get the sense there's a sexual liberation of sorts occuring. Here's an interesting Pacific News Service story that touches upon it:

Liu Mang Yan "is the latest of a string of Chinese women bloggers who have become famous, some even worldwide. They talk about sex and relationships openly, changing the dialogue between the sexes. In a culture where sexual attitudes are still oppressive, the racy details shared by the women bloggers are thrusting them into the spotlight, despite China's most recent crackdown on the Internet news media.
Liu's outspoken posts about sex include a "bedside encyclopedia" of love-making noises, broken down by the type of response it can elicit from your lover, and by geographical regions in China -- that is, how pillow-talk may sound in regional dialect or slang. She talks openly about masturbation ("I have no worldly possession, except for two vibrators") and muses about why men are afraid to say "I love you."

Last one to China is a rotten egg

Silicon Valley folks are flocking to China like never before. In Beijing and Shanghai, I kept running into Bay area captitalists and entrepreneurs who excitedly told me about ventures they'd just started and how it "meets a critical need in the market" or "fills a void."

Starting tomorrow, IBM's Venture Capital Group is hosting the Innovation Forum in Shanghai to discuss trends in semiconductors, software and open standards, telecommunications and financial services. About 150 venture capitalists and local startups -- including prominent VCs from the Valley -- are coming.

Mayfield, Hummer Winblad, Walden and other VCs are sending folks from the Bay area to Shanghai for the event.

IBM's Venture Capital Group now partners with all 20 of the big VCs working in China. Its revenue in China saw double-digit growth in 2004. Linux licenses are up 80 percent.

He got around-- 1.5m Chinese 'descendants of one man'

1.5 million Chinese men are the direct descendants on one man -- Giocangga, the grandfather of the founder of the Qing dynasty, according to a study. The BBC reported today:

Giocangga's extraordinary number of descendants, concentrated mainly in north-east China and Mongolia, are thought to be a result of the many wives and concubines his offspring took.

Dr Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist working at Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, made the finding, based on a study of a set of genes on the male Y chromosome. The genes provided a "genetic surname" of the family to which each man belonged. T

This particular genetic code first appeared just before the Qing dynasty, which came to the fore in 1616 and had conquered China by 1644.

At the time of Giocangga, the population of China was about 100 million - compared with 1.6 billion today.

This means that the average Chinese man at the time of Giocangga would only have around 20 descendants living today - in marked contrast to Giocangga's 1.5 million men.

How uncensored is that blog you're reading?

An interesting story from Singapore's Straits Times:

Two sponsors/advertisers pulled their ads from a heavily-trafficked Singaporean blog, Xiaxue because of reader complaints. Readers apparently didn't like what Wendy Cheng, a spunky 21-year-old Singaporean, had to say about bathrooms for the handicapped.

Several hundred readers complained to the advertisers, Hair salon Kimage, nail studio Voxy and and a third sponsor, LocalBrand (who didn't pull out).

Newspapers, of course, have sometimes felt the heat from advertisers when stories run that are critical of their businesses or industries. Until now, I had not heard of ads being pulled from a blog because of its content.

She was taking a big stand against the exclusivity of disabled bathrooms. She argued that Singapore's disabled bathrooms, which are bigger and equipped with a sink, are NOT just for the use of disabled people.

"Sure, if I see that you are physically disabled, and you need to use the toilet, then yes, obviously I will let you use it and go use a normal toilet," she said. But able-bodied folks, she said, should be able to use it at other times too.

The Straits Times reported she received "rude messages that accused her of being callous and uncivilised, which are among the kinder labels hurled at her."

The most perplexing thing in all of this: I have no idea why so many people actually read her blog, which is really a personal journal. I saw it voted as Best Asian Blog somewhere and went to check it out, thinking it might have interesting bits about culture or maybe even business. It's mostly about her friends, and the parties she goes to. Then there are tons of fotos of her, of course. Sometimes in skimpy clothing -- which I guess answers it all. The Straits report says "she's written about measuring penises and evangelising, and poked fun at the nude pictures posted by a blogger writing as Sarong Party Girl."

And to put your minds at ease, she promises not to change. "I will write exactly the way I've always done." Pheew.

Yahoo under fire

Yahoo's been besieged since it coughed up the identity of an email user at the request of the Chinese government. The user was ID'd as journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in prision for emailing the government's plan to restrict media coverage around the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Last week a Chinese dissident in Beijing, Liu Xiaobo, blasted Yahoo in an open letter to Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. From the Taipei Times:

"I must tell you that my indignation at and contempt for you and your company are not a bit less than my indignation at and contempt for the Communist regime," Liu wrote, according to a translated version of the letter appearing on the Web site of the China Information Center (cicus.org), a news and research clearinghouse based in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Profit makes you dull in morality," Liu's lengthy and scathing message continued. "Did it ever occur to you that it is a shame for you to be considered a traitor to your customer Shi Tao?"

Yahoo, of course, says it's just abiding by the laws of the countries it operates in. But here's an interesting question.

"What if local law required Yahoo to cooperate in strictly separating the races?" asked Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, in a widely linked essay for the Los Angeles Times. "Or the rounding up and extermination of a certain race? Or the stoning of homosexuals?"