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» Google builds loyal following in China - 22-January-2010
By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing Page last updated at 14:16 GMT, Friday, 22 January 2010 Google launched its Chinese site only in 2006, but it has already attracted a loyal following of dedicated users in China. They use the site to send e-mails, look up maps and translate material from Chinese into English, or visa versa. There are other China-based websites that are more popular - most notably the search engine Baidu.com - but some will mourn if Google pulls out of China. The US firm said recently that it was no longer willing to continue censoring its China-based site in line with official regulations. Information censored Liao Yuting, a first-year journalism student at the People's University of China in Beijing, said many think it will be a disaster if Google shuts down. "My friends and I went to the headquarters of Google in Beijing when it made its statement. We wanted to witness a historical event," said the 18 year old. "Google is a symbol of the internet in some ways - G

» Text messages face censorship in China - 22-January-2010
By S.L. Shen UPI Correspondent Published: January 22, 2010 Beijing, China — Chinese citizens living in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest China can finally make international telephone calls, after a six-month period of no service following ethnic riots last July. Domestic text messaging services were also restored this week, but not international messaging. As for the Internet, only a few Chinese official websites and selected regional websites are accessible in Xinjiang at present. All of these services were cut off when riots between local Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese first broke out on July 5 last year. Chinese official media reported the resumption of international telephone service in Xinjiang in a single sentence on Jan. 20. The item did not mention the reason the service had been terminated. The domestic text service was quietly resumed in this region on Jan. 17 – again, announced only by a single sentence in mainland media. Foreign media noted th

» Phnom Penh rejects human rights report as "insulting" (Roundup)... - 22-January-2010
Article Link Jan 22, 2010, 11:12 GMT Phnom Penh - The Cambodian government Friday rejected the annual report of a prominent human rights organization that warned respect for rights in the country had 'dramatically deteriorated' last year. In its assessment, also released Friday, Human Rights Watch called on donors to exert pressure on the government to reverse the trend. But government spokesman Phay Siphan hit back, saying the report was unprofessional, lacked balance and was insulting. He said HRW had ignored the role of Cambodian institutions, and stressed that reform had to come 'little by little.' 'We understand that any government has its flaws - so we are not sleeping on the problem,' Phay Siphan said. 'Criticism is information, and we would have to consider that, but insulting is not [useful] information.' The report by the US-based organization singled out Phnom Penh's forced return to China in December of 20 asylum seekers belonging to the Uighur ethnic minority as a particu

» China says missing lawyer 'is where he should be' - 22-January-2010
The Washington Post By CARA ANNA The Associated Press Friday, January 22, 2010; 1:46 AM BEIJING - A Chinese human rights lawyer missing for almost a year has been judged by legal authorities and "is where he should be," a Foreign Ministry official said in China's first public comment on the case. Gao Zhisheng, one of China's most daring lawyers, has drawn international attention for the unusual length of his disappearance and for his earlier reports of the torture he said he faced from security forces. In a memoir, he described severe beatings, electric shocks to his genitals and cigarettes held to his eyes. His brother said earlier this month that the Beijing police officer who took Gao away in February 2009 told him he "went missing" in September, leading to fears for the lawyer's safety. But at a regular press conference Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu indicated that Gao was in custody, after he was asked whether he knew where Gao was. "The relevant judicial authorit

» China-Turkmenistan gas pipeline to supply gas to Beijing - 22-January-2010
Article Link Published: 21 Jan 2010 22:54:51 PST Jan. 22, 2010 (China Knowledge) - China National Petroleum Corp, the largest oil and gas producer and supplier in the country, said that the natural gas pipeline linking China and Turkmenistan is in full operation and will supply gas to major cities in North China, including Beijing, later this week. The gas supply will help ease the growing demand for the fuel in North China in the winter. It is expected that 5 billion cubic meters of natural gas will be transmitted to China through the pipeline this year. Last month, Urumqi, the capital city of West China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, started to use gas supply from the Central Asian country via the pipeline.

» Cambodia's deportations ordered by China - 22-January-2010
Article Link By Chak Sopheap Guest Commentary Published: January 21, 2010 Niigata, Japan — After decades of isolation due to genocide and political conflict, Cambodia has integrated with regional groups like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and adopted a free market system. However, the right to movement in the country is still restricted and issues related to refugees and migrants are highly politicized. The deportation of 20 Uighur asylum seekers to China in December last year reveals the implications and challenges that face Cambodia. Although many Cambodian refugees who survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime were resettled in other countries thanks to the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which is a legally binding treaty and a milestone in international refugee law, the Cambodian government, which is a signatory to the convention, ignored it in deporting the Uighurs. It has therefore violated its legal and humanitarian responsibilities. Ethnic te

» Webb: U.S. Policies Toward Asian Governments Must Be Consistent, Predictable, and Firm; Rights and Democracy Must be a Priority?... - 22-January-2010
January 21, 2010 Washington, DC – Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) today chaired a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, entitled: “Principles for U.S. Engagement in Asia.” The hearing examined the consistency of U.S. foreign policy in Asia by comparing economic, diplomatic, and national security engagements with various Asian governments, and explored their ramifications on U.S. bilateral and multilateral relationships in the region. “We examine today a long-overlooked area of our foreign policy, rooted in the often contradictory standards we have used in the past and still use today in defining the underlying parameters of our relationships with different countries and different governmental systems,” said Webb, who serves as chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs. “It is important that we clarify the basic tenets that shape our engagements, and place the expansion of indi

» Iron fist wrapped in the hand that gives - 22-January-2010
Asia Times By Willy Lam Jan 23, 2010 The Hu Jintao administration has significantly tightened policy over Tibet in an apparent attempt to ensure the proverbial "long reign and perennial stability" of Chinese Communist Party's in the restive region. Hardline cadres are being appointed to run the region. While unprecedented aid has been pledged for the estimated 6.5 million Tibetans living in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai, the bulk of new infrastructure projects also serve to speed up Han Chinese migration. These multi-pronged measures seem geared toward defusing possible disturbances in the event of the demise of the 75-year-old Dalai Lama. Meanwhile, prospects for the resumption of dialogue between Beijing and the exiled spiritual leader are more dismal than ever. The most eye-catching personnel change is the appointment of the hawkish Pema Thinley (aka Padma Choling), 58, as TAR chairman, or governor. Pema, a former executiv

» China's All-Out War Against Internet Freedom - 21-January-2010
By Lin Xiaofan New Epoch Weekly Last Updated: Jan 21, 2010 Around midnight on Jan. 4, 2010, China’s web users found themselves able to indulge in a fleeting freedom: they could access previously banned websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But before most people woke up and were able to enjoy this freedom, the Great Firewall was restored, shutting out websites which the Chinese government does not want the nation to see. The reason for the firewall breach remains unknown. Though the few hours of unblocked access to the free world were exciting, people are not optimistic about the Chinese authorities' willingness to relax Internet control. The truth is, the regime has been escalating its all-out war against Internet freedom. A Chinese blogger Huang Jian divided the regime’s Internet war into four phases. Phase one was when few Chinese had access to the Internet and only a few websites were blocked, including Wikipedia, YouTube and democracy activists’ websit

» Chinese media hit at White House's Google? - 21-January-2010
The Financial Times By Kathrin Hille in Beijing Published: January 20 2010 14:23 Last updated: January 20 2010 19:41 China has signalled a change of approach to the Google crisis, with state media describing the company’s threat to pull out of the country as a political conspiracy by the US government. Accusations in two newspapers that Washington was using Google as a foreign policy tool were echoed by Chinese government officials on Wednesday. This comes before a policy speech by Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, on internet freedom on Wednesday, raising the risk that the standoff will damage already testy relations between the two major powers. Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece, ran an editorial with the headline: “The world does not welcome the White House’s Google”. “Whenever the US government demands it, Google can easily become a convenient tool for promoting the US government

» Clinton Calls for Web Access, Criticizes China - 21-January-2010
The Wall Street Journal JANUARY 20, 2010 By SIOBHAN GORMAN Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said unrestricted access to the Internet will be a top foreign-policy priority and criticized China and other nations for restricting access. The move comes in the wake of accusations last week that Chinese hackers penetrated Google Inc.'s computer networks. The attack, which also targeted Chinese dissidents, is the kind of issue Mrs. Clinton aims to address, said Alec Ross, a senior adviser. In remarks that were carried live on the State Department's Web site, Mrs. Clinton said that in the last year there has been a "spike in threats to the free flow of information.' She cited China, Tunisia and Uzbekistan for stepping up their censorship of the Internet. And she said that in Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. The growing role of the Internet in foreign policy became clear last year during protests in Iran after allegations of election fraud. The gov

» Clinton Urges Global Response to Internet Attacks - 21-January-2010
The New York Times January 22, 2010 By BRIAN KNOWLTON WASHINGTON — Coupling a salute to Internet freedom with a carefully worded caution to countries like China and Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that countries that engaged in cyberattacks should face consequences and international condemnation. “In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all,” she said in a speech in Washington. “By reinforcing that message, we can create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons.” Mrs. Clinton’s comments came in a speech in which she announced a new $15 million effort to help more young people, women and citizens groups in other countries communicate on the Web. “Given the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing, we need people around the world to pool their knowledge and creativity to help rebuild the global economy, protect our en

» Highlights of Clinton speech on Internet freedom - 21-January-2010
Reuters Thu Jan 21, 2010 12:16pm EST WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday all companies should reject censorship and urged China to thoroughly investigate cyber attacks that led Google to threaten to pull out of the nation. Following are highlights of her speech: INTERNET FREEDOM GOOD FOR BUSINESS "We feel strongly that principles like information freedom aren't just good policy, not just somehow connected to our national values, but they are universal and they are also good for business. To use market terminology, a publicly listed company in Tunisia or Vietnam that operates in an environment of censorship will always trade at a discount relative to an identical firm in a free society. If corporate decision makers don't have access to global sources of news and information, investors will have less confidence in their decisions over the long term. Countries that censor news and information must recognize that, from an economic stand

» Google Didn't Kowtow and Neither Should You - 21-January-2010
The Wall Street Journal JANUARY 21, 2010, 12:03 P.M. ET By JOHN BOLTON Google's threat to withdraw from China has attracted considerable attention in business circles and the critical but arcane world of cyberwarfare. But the unfolding story also has far broader implications for how U.S. businesses approach the Chinese market and for the U.S. government, which has often failed to vigorously assert U.S. political and economic interests. Far from being a retreat, Google's move may represent an aggressive corporate step forward in insisting on reciprocal fair dealing. Although there have been prior examples of corporations leaving China, Google's is the most noteworthy potential precedent because of its global prominence. China's apparent hacking into Google's email system also raises broader questions about the country's inadequate protection of intellectual property and what place the rule of law actually has among Chinese policy-making priorities, political as well as economic. Human

» China Teen Seen as Hero for Killing Local Official - 21-January-2010
The Wall Street Journal By GILLIAN WONG The Associated Press BEIJING January 21, 2010 (AP) When Li Shiming was stabbed through the heart by a hired assassin, few of his fellow villagers mourned the local Communist Party official many say made their lives hell by seizing land, extorting money and bullying people for years. Instead, villagers in the northern town of Xiashuixi have made Li's teenage killer something of a local hero. More than 20,000 people from the coal-mining area petitioned a court for a lenient sentence. "I didn't feel surprised at all when I heard Li Shiming was killed, because people wanted to kill him a long time ago," said villager Xin Xiaomei, who says her husband was harassed for years by Li after the two men had a personal dispute. "I wanted to kill Li myself, but I was too weak." The murder trial has again cast a harsh light on abuses of power by communist cadres and the frustration many ordinary Chinese feel with a one-party system that sometimes allows offic

» What's really at stake in Google vs. China - 21-January-2010
CNN January 21, 2010 12:43 p.m. EST Editor's note: Fareed Zakaria is an author and foreign affairs analyst who hosts "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN U.S. on Sundays at 1 and 5 p.m. ET and CNN International 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. CET / 5 p.m. Abu Dhabi / 9 p.m. HK New York (CNN) - Google's threat to shut down its operations in China might seem like just a dispute between a private company and a government, but the implications are huge for the world's fastest-growing economy, for the United States and for global relations, says analyst Fareed Zakaria. With the dispute in the background, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday the U.S. is committed to freedom of speech online and to freedom from the fear of cyber-attacks. The Google-China dispute surfaced January 12 when the search engine company said it and other companies were the target of cyber-attacks originating in China aimed at gaining access to the e-mail of Chinese advocates for human rights. Google announced that it is no lo

» China Maintains Tight Grip on Communications - 21-January-2010
VOA Alison Klayman Beijing 21 January 2010 Google's threat last week to pull out of China following cyber attacks on its e-mail service is another reminder of the censorship and limits on Internet freedom in the country. Despite hopes that China would open up following the 2008 Olympics, Beijing continues to introduce new restrictions and monitoring systems on cell phones and Internet use. Since ethnic violence flared in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi last July, China's government has kept the Internet switched off for most of the area's 20 million residents. Their thirst for the Internet inspired some people to travel hundreds of miles to a neighboring province just to visit Internet cafés. Wang Dongsheng lives in the Xinjiang city of Kuerle and owns a business trading a local variety of jade. He says when he needs to look up information he calls a colleague in Nanjing and the colleague searches the Internet for him. Wang says not having Internet access for almost half a year has b

» Ex-Guantanamo detainee: "I am sure it will be closed this year"... - 21-January-2010
By Besar Likmeta — Special to GlobalPost Published: January 21, 2010 14:37 ET TIRANA, Albania — While human rights activists marked the eighth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility two weeks ago with protests, calling on President Barack Obama to follow through on his pledge to close it, one of Gitmo’s former inmates was rolling dough in a Tirana pizza restaurant. Abu Bakker Qassim is one of five Chinese Uighurs released to Albania in 2006 after United States authorities feared that sending them back to China would expose them to persecution and human rights abuses. Although seven of his compatriots still remain in Guantanamo despite having been found innocent and cleared for release, Qassim’s faith in Obama’s intent has not wavered, saying that the U.S. president has received little help from America’s European allies, who were once some of the prison’s most vociferous critics. A year ago Friday, Obama signed a h

» China Cracks Down On Texting - 20-January-2010
Forbes Robyn Meredith 01.20.10, 12:01 AM ET HONG KONG - China has a new policy: If Beijing doesn't like the text messages you send in the country, your cellphone will be disabled, preventing you from sending or receiving messages. According to the government newspaper China Daily, Beijing has banned "illegal or unhealthy" content in SMS messages, but it hasn't defined exactly what that entails. Is it political? Can you safely type to a friend: "Chinese authorities ordered peaceful protesters killed in the Tiananmen Square Massacre?" Is it part of Beijing's recent anti-pornography push? Would sending a racy message to your husband or wife shut down your phone? (If so, that could have saved Tiger Woods and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick a lot of trouble.) It remains a mystery. "The standard for determining whether a message is unhealthy or not is based on 13 criteria handed down by nine central government departments," reports China Daily. "No details of the criteria were given."

» China blocks Web, text, phone ties to riot-torn region for 6 months... - 20-January-2010
Dallas News 12:00 AM CST on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 The Associated Press LIUYUAN, China – China's Xinjiang region and its 20 million people have been without links to the outside world since the government blocked virtually all Internet, texting and international phone contact after ethnic riots in July. UNPRECEDENTED ACTION No country has shut down an information infrastructure so widely for so long, said the Open Net Initiative, a Harvard-linked monitor of Internet restrictions. BACKGROUND Authorities unplugged Xinjiang to head off any repeat of the ethnic rioting, which the government blamed on overseas activists stirring resentment between the Han majority and Uighur minority. SEEKING A CONNECTION For an Internet link, Xinjiang residents must travel to farflung places such as Liuyuan, a 13-hour train ride from Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital. REACHING OUT TO MISSOURI One Xinjiang woman who wanted to chat with her American husband took an overnight bus to Kazakhstan to get onl