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In a stunning move, an appeals court has overturned the guilty verdict of activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng. Chen was sentenced to four years in prison this past summer after launching a crusade against the forced sterilization of peasant women. Local officials had ordered the sterilizations as well as forced abortions in an effort to meet population growth targets for their districts. Chen sued and organized demonstrations against the policies. Within weeks he was under house arrest. Then he was taken into custody. 10 months later, he was on trial for ‘distrubing the peace’ and ‘inciting unrest.’ Oh yeah, did I mention that Chen has been blind since childhood?
Mr. Chen’s first trial was widely condemned as a travesty. Beijing-based lawyers whom Mr. Chen chose to defend him were harassed before the trial and then barred from the hearing. The court assigned Mr. Chen two local attorneys who introduced no evidence, called no witnesses and did not contest the charges against him.
It is unclear why an appeals court in Linyi, which is the same urban area where local officials ordered the crackdown on Mr. Chen, would decide to overturn the verdict against him.
It is possible that higher authorities
There are a lot of myths about the Great Wall that need to go away. First of all: you can’t see it from the moon. Second: While portions of the wall have been constructed and linked and rebuilt in stages since before the Qin dynasty, the Great Wall that most people see today is of a (comparatively) recent vintage, dating back to the 14th century when the Ming emperors sought some means to separate themselves from their Mongol enemies. It never really worked as a “wall,” but it did serve an important defensive purpose as an elevated highway and means of sending communications quickly along the northern mark.
But even so, if you’ve been standing on the northern frontier for such a long time, you’d like to get some respect. First, the announcement that the Wall, which used to protect the Chinese state, now needs state protection. Starting this week, you can no longer carve your name or other graffiti nor take portions of it home as souvenirs or use stones from the landmark to rebuild your pig shed. The Wall sees a reported 10 million tourists a year, but not all of them behave. Getting the chop are such
In 1862, three of China’s most prominent officials, Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang, and Zuo Zongtang, were locked in a mortal battle against the last hold outs of Hong Xiuquan’s Taiping Rebellion. Even as the armies of Zeng and Li used western weapons and troops (the Ever Victorious Army led first by the American Frederick Townshend Ward and later by Charles “Chinese” Gordon), Li Hongzhang began to worry about the motives of foreign intervention in this internal conflict and at the growing power of the foreigners in China’s major port cities. “In early August 1862, he wrote to Tso Tsung-tang* (Zuo Zongtang): ‘Although Shanghai is on our population register and on our map, the hearts of the officials and the people have long since gone over to the foreigners, as if unaware that the Chinese [themselves] can still manage affairs and that the Chinese troops can still fight.’ Li strongly suspected that the British and French had territorial designs on China in the areas adjacent to Shanghai and Ningpo. By mid-August, Li wrote Tseng Kuo-fan (Zeng Guofan) that local Western-language newspapers (which were translated for him regularly) had published a proposal that all of Shanghai, not just the foreign settlement, should
From Ryan’s Life in Suzhou Blog and ESWN: One woman dared to do what almost every foreign visitor to China’s cities wishes they could do at least once in their life: She took the law into her own hands, put her bike on the line, and enforced the traffic laws. A driver trying to sneak through the “bicycle only” lane in his car ran up against a little thing we like to call Justice. The result? Our foreign friend was cursed and threatened but she held her ground and the driver finally gave in. The next driver? He didn’t even try to challenge her. He just meekly slid back into the auto lane. Academics tend to not like Wikipedia. I’m a little ambivalent myself. I’ve read some things on Wikipedia that are just plain silly. (I’ve also read too many student papers with things taken directly from Wikipedia that are just plain silly.) But I’ve got to admit, if I need to look up a quick date or to remind myself of a particular event, I’ve been known to “Wiki” from time to time. Finally, one professor decided to put Wikireality to the test. The results may surprise you.
Starting this week, I will be a guest blogger/contributing writer over at Richard’s excellent The Peking Duck. TPD has been an institution in the blogosphere for many years and I am looking forward to joining in the always fascinating conversations on that site. This blog will still be my main focus and I will be posting here at the Granite Studio daily with many of my first posts at TPD being cross-postings. In the future, I’d like to focus a bit more on history here and save some of my ‘contemporary’ commentaries for TPD. We’ll see how it goes. It’s been three months since I revived the Granite Studio blog and the appreciation and kind words for this little hobby of mine have been great. Thanks for your continued support, keep checking back daily, and I hope that you will join me in the dialogue on Richard’s site as well.
– 花崗齋之烤鸭
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