The ideal metaphor for the new reality of U.S.-China relations: The U.S. Embassy has been straining, in vain, to get the Chinese government to change the official Chinese transliteration of Obama, from 奥巴马 to 欧巴马 -- basically, from Ao Ba Ma to Ou Ba Ma. As is often the case when China incorporates a foreign word into Chinese characters, the original Ao Ba Ma spelling popped up organically some years ago and stuck, even though it is not a correct translation. Now, as a great piece on Danwei.org explains, the U.S. is trying to persuade China to change it, but China has contemptuously refused. The moral: When you can't even get your counterpart in a negotiation to spell your name right, you are probably in for a rough ride.

Two Chinese rights activists said today that they were briefly detained by police after seeking a meeting with Obama in Beijing. They added that the US influence over fascist-ruled China on human rights had declined, as evidenced by the lack of coverage of Obama's visit within the country.

Jiang Tianyong and Fan Yafeng said they had gathered with others at a hotel near the US embassy on Wednesday, the day the American president left the country. But plain-clothed police officers arrived shortly after they rang the embassy and asked for a meeting. Most of the group left, but the two men stayed until they were taken away and questioned for two hours, Jiang said.

"We had wanted to discuss [with Obama] the deterioration of religious freedom in China, as well as deteriorating treatment of other rights defenders," said Fan, a legal scholar who recently lost his job at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is a Christian active in informal house churches.

"Now on the Chinese mainland and internationally, it's widely believed that Obama's visit to China was a big failure," Fan added, citing the fact that no questions were allowed at Obama's press appearance with Hu Jintao and that his meeting with students was broadcast on television only in Shanghai.

Jiang, who said he was also detained for more than 12 hours yesterday by officers who confronted him as he took his daughter to school, added: "Personally I'm very disappointed by his visit.

"I believe a meeting would have shown Americans were still supporting the rights of Chinese activist lawyers. It's very important to show that his administration is concerned about human rights."

Jiang was one of almost two dozen lawyers whose licences were not renewed this spring. He has defended other activists and said he was willing to act for Tibetans accused of protests and rioting last year.

The New York Times reported this week that American officials considered organising meetings with a number of people, including Chinese lawyers, adding: "Officials say time constraints, not political considerations, sidelined those options."

Another lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said he had been told by friends that Americans were interested in a meeting. He had been willing to take part but heard no more about it.

In China, Obama criticised internet censorship and stressed that the US regarded rights such as political participation as universal, but avoided referring to specific abuses in the country. Analysts disagree about whether it is more effective to press the issues openly or focus on discussions in private.

Jeff Bader, senior director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council, told reporters: "This was as direct a discussion on human rights as I've seen by any high-level visitor with the Chinese".

He said the president had made it clear to his hosts that such rights were a "fundamental, bedrock principle" of US foreign policy.

Separately, the US embassy in Beijing confirmed today that it is pressing China to release an American citizen held for two years on state secrets charges.

Xue Feng, a Chinese-born geologist, was detained after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his US-based employer.

Jerome Cohen, a legal expert advising Xue's family, said the case - like that of Stern Hu, the Australian Rio Tinto employee detained along with three Chinese colleagues in July - raised questions about the limits of China's secrets laws, and how they apply to commercial information.

State propaganda heralded President Barack Obama's maiden trip to China as a triumph, but ordinary Chinese were largely shielded by their government from his most critical remarks and activists were disappointed by the measured tone of those they did hear.

One blogger even pined for the tough line taken by former President George W. Bush.

"Like a star rushing from one show to another, Obama has come and gone, without stirring the slightest ripples," blogger Zhao Dezhu wrote in an online post.

Zhao, who writes a popular blog and twitters under the name Hecaitou, said the visit made him miss Bush who "couldn't speak with flowery language and even made grammatical mistakes but spoke as plainly as an American farmer."

Obama, by contrast, speaks "with sweet but empty words."

State media portrayed the two-and-a-half day trip as a slam-dunk for China-U.S. relations, saying a joint statement issued by Obama and China's President Hu Jintao was a breakthrough to inspire the world.

"The Sino-U.S. Joint Statement is as worthy as gold," trumpeted the state-run 21st Century Business Herald while the Beijing Post said it set "a good example for many other bilateral relations."

Among regular folk, there was no such sizzle.

Maybe it was the rain in Shanghai or the below freezing temperatures in Beijing, but crowds did not line the streets to catch a glimpse of the president's motorcade—a marked difference from the well-wishers who have clamored to see Obama in Europe.

Obama does have a following in China, particularly among youth who see him as an exciting contrast to China's staid leadership, but his visit seems to have had little affect on even those who like him—possibly because many of his comments were not widely disseminated.

Several young people interviewed Wednesday said they admired Obama, but none had seen his town hall-style meeting in Shanghai and they based their opinions on photos, state media coverage, or things they'd read about him before. They had little to say about his visit specifically.

"He has a big fan club among the young people of China, because many of us have seen the adversity he has gone through and we look up to him for inspiration," Li Yuanyuan, a 24-year-old office worker said during her lunch break in downtown Beijing.

Han Xuanke, 29, an employee of a technology firm in Beijing's business district said he was more interested in Obama than he had been in Bush or former President Bill Clinton.

"He represents energy and something new and exciting that Chinese politicians don't have," Han said.

The town hall was intended to let the president mix with people like Han and Li, but Beijing ensured it was a tightly scripted affair that few people were able to see because it was only broadcast on one regional television channel.

Obama's strongest comments during the town hall were directed at China's Internet controls.

"I'm a big supporter of non-censorship," Obama said. "I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet—or unrestricted Internet access—is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged."

The critical remarks were played down in the Chinese media and scrubbed from some Chinese Web sites.

The event was streamed live on the White House Web site, but the connection was choppy and delayed. The State Department said later more than 7,000 Chinese Internet users watched the event—a tiny fraction of the more than 300 million Chinese who are online.

Chinese bloggers who saw it were grateful that he addressed censorship, but many zeroed in on what they considered Obama's waffling language.

"Learn English from Obama: Instead of saying 'I want to eat,' say 'I am a big supporter of non-hunger,'" Wang Pei, a writer based in eastern China's Hangzhou, twittered on Tuesday.

Many were watching the town hall closely for how Obama would handle China's poor human rights record, especially after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in February that the United States would not let such concerns interfere with cooperation with Beijing on global crises.

Obama spoke broadly about basic freedoms but steered clear of the buzz phrase "human rights." The next day, he more pointedly raised the issue during a media appearance with President Hu, even touching on rights for minorities—a particular sore spot in China, where Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs seek more autonomy.

"We do not believe these principles are unique to America, but rather they are universal rights and that they should be available to all peoples, to all ethnic and religious minorities," Obama said.

Xue Chen, a research fellow of Strategic Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, said Obama's measured tone on such sensitive topics was a positive development that showed a rethinking of U.S. foreign policy since Bush.

"They are now more willing to take the role of a listener. And only in this way can the U.S. interests be better met," he said.

For many mainland activists, however, the approach fell short.

Yang Zili, a Chinese dissident recently freed after eight years in prison for forming a political study group, had been expecting something stronger from Obama.

"Although Obama mentioned some words such as 'rights' and 'freedom' in the speech in Shanghai, we expect he can do more to promote the improvement of China's human rights condition," he said.

Zhang Jian, a 30-year-old office worker from north China's Inner Mongolia region said many Chinese were taking a wait-and-see approach to the new leader.

"It's a trip Obama needs to make. ... But I don't think we're necessarily going to immediately warm up to the U.S. as a result of one trip," said Zhang who was visiting Beijing on business. "It will be a relationship built over mutual trust and understanding over time."

Liu Li Xin and his group Ordinance depict a new mood of nationalism

While US President Barack Obama has been sitting down with China's leaders seeking ever closer co-operation, some observers are concerned as to how China will behave as it gets stronger.

Beijing is building up its military forces, while some fear that popular nationalism is a growing and worrying force.

In the dark, cavernous space of a rock club in Beijing's university district, Liu Li Xin is warming up. Crashing chords resonate from his electric guitar.

It is the sound of China's stirring underground. Li Xin and his group Ordinance are at the radical edge of Chinese music. Their latest album, Rock City, has been banned from the airwaves.

The lyrics criticise the government, they tell of democracy, corruption. They say: "Taiwan is ours, Tibet is ours. Compromising with the United States and Japan is a disgrace".

"Our lyrics are aimed at our government," says Li Xin.

"It takes a very tough line towards its own people. But outside China it is very soft. When your people are being bullied by others, you should stand up for them. Right now they are being very soft."

Li Xin articulates a new nationalism that is a growing and increasingly powerful force in China.

It is almost always hostile to the US and Japan, apt to believe that other nations are bent on thwarting China's rise.

Government 'afraid'

China's nationalists are often critical of their own government too, saying it is weak, not doing enough to stand up for China's interests.

A powerful country like China of course needs a powerful army, an army that can conquer anybody in any part of the world Wang Xiaodong

"Right now the government brainwashes people into thinking that the country is strong," Li Xin says.

"The authorities have banned our songs but we are not afraid at all. I think it is the government who are afraid, and that is why they banned us."

Beijing's biggest bookshop is a vast place with thousands of titles on sale. For part of this year one book was riding high in the best-seller lists.

It's called Unhappy China and is a collection of pieces by a group of nationalist writers about the vision they have for China.

They say it has sold 800,000 copies since it was published earlier this year. The day we went to the bookshop, there was just one copy left.

One of the men who contributed, Wang Xiaodong, lives in a grey, nondescript apartment block in a Beijing suburb. He is one of the men giving a voice to the growing current of nationalism in China.

I ask him what he means when he writes in Unhappy China: "If you don't respect us we will beat you up."

"If there is a powerful country, and if you don't try to please that country, you will be in trouble," says Wang Xiaodong. "That's exactly the way the United States behaves."

When I ask if he believes China should have a powerful military and be prepared to go to war he replies: "Definitely. A powerful country like China of course needs a powerful army, an army that can conquer anybody in any part of the world. This should be our grand vision."

In recent years China has embarked on a rapid military build-up, acquiring the ability to project its power far beyond its borders.

One day it may even be in a position to challenge the US as the dominant power in Asia.

China's leaders says their nation's rise will be a peaceful one. But US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg recently called on China to reassure other nations about its intentions.

"Just as we and our allies must make clear that we are prepared to welcome China's arrival as a prosperous and successful power, China must reassure the rest of the world that its development and growing global role will not come at the expense of the security and well-being of others," Mr Steinberg said.

'Dangerous scenario'

One of his predecessors, Susan Shirk, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian affairs under President Bill Clinton, goes further.

Li Nan was stopped from holding a nationalist protest

She says the combination of China's growing military and growing popular nationalism presents dangers.

"It creates the risk, not a high probability, but a risk, that one day China's leaders could feel that to look strong in the eyes of their public they have to make a threat to Japan or to Taiwan and that they will feel that they cannot back down from that threat without jeopardising their own domestic support or even their own survival in power. So I think that is a very dangerous scenario," she says.

Perhaps aware of the dangers of unchecked nationalism, China is trying to control some on the more radical fringe.

Three years ago there was a confrontation on some disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Chinese nationalists had sailed there to try to evict Japanese soldiers from the islands.

In the Chinese boat was Li Nan. He says his anti-Japan alliance has had more than 70,000 supporters registered on its website. But when he tried to stage another protest this year the Chinese authorities stopped him.

"I am not just targeting Japan but all those who threaten the interests of the Chinese people," says Li Nan. "Maybe even the United States and some others, I would see them all as enemies."

And Li Nan offers a view of how a future crisis, such as one over energy supplies, might spur on nationalist sentiment in China.

"In the future, energy supplies will become more and more scarce. Today each American consumes 10 times as much energy as each Chinese person. So every nation will have to think about their own survival. At that time, nationalism will be the mainstream."

It is a vision that will give some in America pause for thought.

The US National Intelligence Strategy this year described China as presenting a complex global challenge.

A China with a strong nationalist current and a powerful military could be seen as an even more troubling prospect for Washington.

A CNN correspondent said Monday she was detained byChinese security guards in Shanghai for two hours for displaying a T-shirt on camera depicting US President Barack Obama as Mao Zedong.

Emily Chang, a Beijing-based correspondent for the US television network, said in a blog post on CNN.com that she hunted down the shirt after hearing they had been banned amid fears they "may offend the American president."

The shirt shows Obama, who is making his first visit to China as president, in a Red Army uniform staring into the distance in a pose made famous by the former Chinese leader.

The front of the shirt says "Serve the People" in Chinese, Chang said. "Oba-Mao" is written on the back in English.

Chang said she held the shirt up to the camera while filming a story in a Shanghai market.

"Two security guards happened to pass by at the moment I announced to the camera: 'This is the T-shirt everybody is talking about,'" she said.

"And that was it. They scrambled towards us and tried to pry the shirt out of my hands," Chang said. "I didn't give in.

"There was a bit of yelling and quite a scuffle," she said, adding that CNN "had everything on tape."

"We ended up being detained for two hours in the cold, maze of a market," she said. "A crowd gathered round. More security and then police showed up.

"They wanted our press cards, our passports, but most of all, they wanted the shirt," she said. "Finally, they let us go. Phew!"

Chang refused to surrender the offending shirt and joked that a number of jealous White House and CNN colleagues had tried to "bribe" her for it.

by Sophie Richardson
Speaking in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall on Saturday on the first leg of his visit to Asia, President Barack Obama stressed the importance of promoting human rights in the region. “Supporting human rights,” he said, “provides lasting security that cannot be purchased in any other way." “There are certain aspirations that human beings hold in common: The freedom to speak your mind, and choose your leaders; the ability to access information, and worship how you please; confidence in rule of law, and the equal administration of justice. These are not impediments to stability, they are its cornerstones.”

Human rights have deteriorated markedly in China since President Obama took office, particularly for the country’s vibrant but beleaguered civil society—journalists, lawyers, health, human rights and religious advocates. To help reverse this trend, President Obama should take up with President Hu Jintao each of the five human-rights areas he spotlighted in Suntory Hall.

On “the freedom to speak your mind, and choose your leaders,” President Obama should ask President Hu to release Chinese activists who have been jailed or detained for exercising this basic right. Liu Xiaobo, for example, was arrested last December for coauthoring Charter 08, a pro-democracy and human-rights manifesto. In June, he was formally charged with “incitement to subvert state power,” a charge often used to silence critics of the Chinese government.

On the “ability to access information,” President Obama should raise the case of Tan Zuoren and Huang Qi, two activists also facing charges of subversion. Their crime? Investigating the deaths of schoolchildren in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake and posting their findings online. China’s “Great Firewall” prevents the country’s 338 million Internet users from freely accessing information on the Web, while the censorship of the press, television, and radio is equally pervasive.

On the “ability to worship how you please,” President Obama should ask President Hu to ensure the respect of China’s own constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. In spite of this provision, Buddhist followers of the Dalai Lama in Tibet, Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and Christians in underground “house churches” face numerous restrictions to their freedom of faith.

On the “confidence in the rule of law,” President Obama should urge the Chinese government to abolish the practice of renewing lawyers' licenses annually—a way to disbar courageous rights-defending lawyers who bring cases that expose government abuses. He should also address the state secrets law which so often is used against peaceful critics of the government. On the “equal administration of justice,” President Obama should denounce recent executions and the complete lack of due process in the trials of Tibetans and Uighurs arrested after protests in March 2008 and July 2009.

Finally, as the Chinese government welcomes President Obama on his first official visit, thousands of Chinese suffer in secret, unlawful detention facilities known as “black jails,” the existence of which the Chinese government unconvincingly denies.

Human Rights Watch has interviewed dozens of people who were grabbed off the streets and detained in these prisons, used primarily by provincial and municipal officials as a means of stopping their citizens from complaining to national officials about abuses like illegal land grabs and corruption. Detainees—men, women and teenagers—are often physically and psychologically abused. Many are denied food and sleep, and fall victim to theft, extortion or sexual abuse by guards.

Said one 43-year-old man of his 55-day detainment: "I was beaten [by guards] every three days... they said I didn't respect their work. I couldn't endure it and several times considered suicide."

President Obama should call for the dismantlement of these illegal detention facilities, and ask China’s leaders to make rule of law reforms a top priority.

Even as he meets with senior government officials in China, President Obama should remember to advocate for human rights of the people of China. By making these requests, he can show that he is willing to walk the walk—not just talk the talk—on human rights.

Dr. Sophie Richardson is the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

Obama Talks Human Rights, Censorship With Chinese Students But Event Is Not Broadcast Nationally

At the Museum of Science and Technology Monday afternoon, Obama took questions from a docile audience of more than 400 Chinese university students handpicked by officials of eight different Chinese universities.

The town hall meeting was one of the few unscripted moments. It was supposed to be carried live on Chinese state television but at the last moment, the Chinese government changed its mind and only local stations in Shanghai, and the White House Web site, carried it live.

The president opened with a short speech, saying that America and China's rocky past shouldn't influence the future.

But he did not shy away from those disagreements -- including the issue of human rights, a subject that has weighed on the U.S.-China relationship in recent years.

"These freedoms of expression and worship and access to information and political participation, we believe are universal rights," he said. ""They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities -- whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation. Indeed, it is that respect for universal rights that guides America's openness to other countries; our respect for different cultures; our commitment to international law; and our faith in the future."

The questions were wide-ranging but fairly unchallenging. The students asked the president about his views on the arms sales to Taiwan, his Afghanistan strategy review, and what he hopes to take back with him from this trip to China.

The Obama administration says it solicited questions from the U.S. Embassy Web site so as to ensure some "authentic" queries will be made as well.

The White House said it wanted this forum to be just like those that the president holds in the United States -- no pre-screened questions, a free-flowing dialogue.

So it was fitting when the president was asked about China's Internet censorship policies and whether Chinese should be able to access banned sites like Twitter. Communist censors prevent Chinese citizens from accessing many sites, including social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites.

'The More Freely Information Flows, the Stronger the Society Becomes'

The Internet question came via the U.S. Embassy Web site and read by U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman.

"In a country with 350 million Internet users and 60 million bloggers, do you know of the firewall?" Huntsman asked. "And second, 'Should we be able to use Twitter freely?'"

Obama first noted that he personally does not use Twitter -- "My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone" -- but said he is a "big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information."

"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes," he said. "Because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas, it encourages creativity and so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use."

Obama called unrestricted Internet access, as in the United States, "a source of strength" and something to be encouraged.

Seemingly making an attempt at humor that didn't necessarily translate well into Mandarin, Obama said that "I should be honest, as president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time."

He then turned to a more serious point, saying, "I think people naturally,...when they're in positions of power sometimes think, 'Oh, how could that person say that about me,' or 'That's irresponsible.'... But the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States."

The president was asked twice to explain why he won the Noble Peace Prize, which he said he received with "great humility." Obama told the students he believes the award was not about him personally, but the change he believes he represents.

White House officials were clearly disappointed that the president's town hall did not air live on Chinese state television.

One aide said the fact that it did not puts even more of a point on the president's statements on freedom of expression and human rights.

(Vetted) Question Time: Obama's Chinese Town Hall

It was a town hall, but this time Barack Obama was not in Iowa or New Hampshire. There were no hay bales, no bunting and no activists with questions about universal health care, clean coal or legalizing marijuana. This forum, after all, was being held in a nation controlled by the Communist Party.

Instead of being greeted by voters mulling their options, Obama on Monday met with several hundred well-dressed, attentive and relentlessly on-message students, handpicked by Chinese authorities for the occasion. They listened attentively, nodding in agreement at some of his answers and laughing at his jokes. Most of their questions were something less than challenging. "What measures will you take to deepen this close relationship between cities of the United States and China?" asked the first questioner, a young woman whom Obama picked randomly from the crowd. "What's the main reason that you were honored with the Nobel Prize for Peace?" asked another. A third followed up on the Nobel Prize line of inquiry. "What's your university/college education that brings you to get such kind of prizes?"

It was the first time a U.S. President had ever hosted a town hall in the Communist Party–controlled state, and the terms of the event were carefully negotiated between diplomats from both countries. The selection of the audience aside, Chinese authorities also picked three questions that had been submitted over the Internet — including one that was sharply critical of U.S. support for the Taiwanese military. U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman read an additional question, which the White House said had been randomly selected from a group of online submissions acquired by the U.S. government.

Huntsman's question, the most controversial of the night, asked about the "great firewall" that prevents open access to the Internet in China, where many websites are blocked by government censors. "I'm a big supporter of noncensorship," Obama said in a section of the event that was described on the website of Xinhua, the state-run news agency. "This is part of the tradition of the United States."

But the Obama Administration's initial hopes for widespread Chinese broadcast of the event were not, in the end, realized. Though the event was covered on Shanghai television, elsewhere in the country the broadcast networks did not carry the feed. The White House website streamed the video, but it was not immediately apparent that any of the major Chinese Web portals had done the same. A TIME reporter tried to find Chinese residents watching the event in Beijing Internet cafés, but a survey of a half-dozen establishments found no one watching. Customers were playing online games instead.

The frustrations over distribution aside, Obama's message of the importance of communication and mutual respect did seem to strike a chord with the audience at the event. Obama received multiple rounds of applause, and when he spoke of the importance of education for women, many of the young ladies in the audience could be seen nodding their heads in approval.

In an address before taking questions, Obama mentioned the long struggle in the U.S. for equal rights among its citizens, invoking Martin Luther King and Thomas Jefferson to suggest parallels for increased individual rights in China. "We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles that we stand for are unique to our nation," Obama said. "These freedoms of expression and worship — of access to information and political participation — we believe are universal rights."

As a mixed-race girl growing up in this most cosmopolitan of mainland Chinese cities, 20-year-old Lou Jing said she never experienced much discrimination -- curiosity and questions, but never hostility.

So nothing prepared Lou, whose father is a black American, for the furore that erupted in late August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.

As the country gets ready to welcome the first African American U.S. president, whose first official visit here starts Sunday, the Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people. Many appeared stunned that Americans had elected a black man, and President Obama's visit has underscored Chinese ambivalence about the growing numbers of blacks living here.

"It's sad," Lou said, her eyes welling up as she recalled her experience. "If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. . . . Before the contest, I didn't realize these kinds of attitudes existed."

As China has expanded its economic ties with Africa -- trade between them reached $107 billion last year -- the number of Africans living here has exploded. Tens of thousands have flocked to the south, where they are putting down roots, establishing communities, marrying Chinese women and having children.

In the process, they are making tiny pockets of urban China more racially diverse -- and forcing the Chinese to deal with issues of racial discrimination. In the southern city of Guangzhou, where residents refer to one downtown neighbourhood as Chocolate City, local newspapers have been filled in recent months with stories detailing discrimination and alleging police harassment against the African community.

"In Guangzhou, to be frank, they don't like Africans very much," said Diallo Abdual, 26, who came to China from Guinea 1 1/2 years ago to buy cheap Chinese clothes to ship back to West Africa for sale.

With the recession, his business has dried up, his money is gone, and he has overstayed his visa. Now, like many Africans here, he spends most of his days at Guangzhou's Tangqi shopping mall avoiding the police.

"The security will beat you with irons like you are a goat," he said. "The way they treat the blacks is very, very bad." He and others pointed out the spot where in July several Africans jumped from an upper-floor window to escape an immigration raid. One migrant was reported critically injured in the fall, and a large number of Africans marched on the local police station in protest.

The Guangzhou Security Bureau said in a statement at the time that it had a duty to check that foreigners living in the city were there legally.

Long-held prejudice

In the 1960s, China began befriending African countries, supporting liberation movements in Africa and bringing African students to China in a show of Third World solidarity. But that official policy of friendship has always been balanced against another reality -- the widely held view here that black people are inferior, that white people are wealthy and successful.

"The kind of prejudice you see now really happened with the economic growth," said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of "Straight Talk," a nightly current affairs talk show. "The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, 'the West' is white people."

Hung, 48, said her generation was "taught world history in a way that black people were oppressed, they were slaves, and we haven't seen any sign of success since. The African countries are still poor, and blacks [in America] still live in inner cities." Hung noted that Chinese racial prejudices extend to the country's own minority groups, including Tibetans and Uighurs -- or anyone who is not ethnically Han Chinese.

The view of African Americans as poor and oppressed fits into the official narrative of the United States as a place of glaring inequalities. China's most recent annual report on the United States' human rights record in 2008, released in February, made no mention of Obama's historic election. But it said, "In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life."

"Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society," the report said. "There is serious racial hostility in the United States."

Sherwood Hu, a Shanghai-based filmmaker, was one of the judges on "Go! Oriental Angel" who gave Lou high marks. "Before the Cultural Revolution, China considered black people our brothers and white people our enemies," Hu said. "But deep down, they're a little bit afraid of black people."

The racial animosity here reflects a prejudice dating to China's mainly agrarian past: Darker skin meant you worked the fields; lighter skin put you among the elite. The country is rapidly industrializing and urbanizing, but that historical prejudice remains. High-end skin-whitening products are a $100 million-a-year business in China, according to industry statistics.

'Are we racist?'

Chen Juan, 27, a secretary in an English-language training school in Beijing, regularly uses skin-whitening products and carries an umbrella on summer days. "For me, the whiter, the better. Being white means pretty," she said. "If someone looks too black, I feel they look countrified and like a farmer. . . . Being white is prettier than being black."

"In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough," Chen continued. "To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."

P.C. Chike, a Nigerian businessman in Guangzhou who has been in China for five years, exports wigs and extensions made from Chinese hair to his home country. He married a Chinese woman from Beijing, and they have a son, with another on the way.

"Chinese don't like Africans. They don't like black skin," Chike said. "China trying to embrace Africa is a political statement. The question is, how do they treat black people?"

Li Wenjuan, Chike's wife, said she thinks racial attitudes are less coarse in Beijing than in Guangzhou, where the commonly used Cantonese term for blacks translates as "black ghosts."

Some here say Obama's presidency is causing a major shift in attitudes. Others, however, say many Chinese rationalize his election as a fluke of the American system or suggest that Obama, whose mother was white, isn't "really" black.

"It will be really interesting to see what happens when he comes to visit, because I really think the Chinese have a hard time with it," Hung said. "Nobody has dealt with this question of what this means to our sense of race. It's a kind of self-examination that Chinese -- including myself -- need to go through: Are we racist?"

China has detained several dissidents and campaigners ahead of US President Barack Obama's much-anticipated first visit to the country, their relatives and close contacts told AFP Saturday.

Obama arrives in Shanghai on Sunday and moves onto Beijing the next day for a four-day maiden presidential trip during which he has been urged to raise human rights with the Asian giant's top leadership.

But as the visit drew close, the head of an activist group for parents whose children were sickened by tainted milk in China had been detained, his wife told AFP.

"Zhao Lianhai was criminally detained for 'provoking an incident'," Li Xuemei said in a text, without giving further details.

According to activist group Human Rights in China, Zhao was handcuffed and taken away late Friday night by police officers who searched his house and took away computers, a video recorder, a camera and an address book.

When Zhao refused to go with them, as the summons did not state a cause, the police officers filled in "provoking an incident" in the summons, the group said. Police in Beijing would not comment on the case.

Zhao has campaigned relentlessly for parents whose children suffered from drinking milk tainted with the melamine chemical, which killed six children and sickened nearly 300,000 others in a scandal that erupted in September 2008.

Qi Zhiyong, a dissident who lost a leg during the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, said he had also been detained for trying to organise a human rights seminar on November 9 in a Beijing park.

In a text sent to AFP, Qi said he and fellow organisers had planned for the seminar to last until the end of Obama's visit.

He had also applied to police to protest the US President's visit, "to press him to pay attention to human rights in China, people's livelihoods and the relatives of jailed people, as he comes only to talk about climate change."

Qi said he was being held in the Beijing suburbs and had been charged with unlawful assembly and disturbing the social order.

He added that Li Jinping, who every year tries to organise commemorations of deposed former leader Zhao Ziyang, who opposed the use of force to quell the 1989 protests, had also been detained.

Yang Qiuyu, a housing rights activist, and more than 30 other petitioners had also been taken away, Qi said.

The dollar stays flat against the Chinese Yuan, even as it loses value against other major currencies. The dollar is down to $1.50 per Euro, compared to $1.27 at this time last year (sorry to folks daydreaming about summer in Italy). It's down against the Canadian dollar, the Japanese yen and the entire "broad dollar index" tracked by the Federal Reserve. But the dollar is unchanged against the Chinese Yuan (unless one considers 6.836 to 6.827 a drop).
China's deliberate policy of pegging the Yuan to the dollar makes American imports of Chinese goods artificially cheap and gives American companies opening factories in China an artificial subsidy. That's good for China but bad for America, and helps explain our soaring trade imbalance with China. An extraordinary 83 percent of America's non-oil trade deficit is with China. During the downturn, our trade deficit with other countries has been shrinking -- but not with China.

One day in late summer 2008, FBI and Secret Service agents flew to Chicago to inform Barack Obama's campaign team that its computer system had been hacked. "You've got a problem. Somebody's trying to get inside your systems," an FBI agent told the team, according to a source familiar with the incident.

Chinese Trial Reveals VAST Web of Corruption

Wen Qiang had a fondness for Louis Vuitton belts, fossilized dinosaur eggs and B-list pop stars. For a public employee in charge of the local judiciary, he also had a lot of money: nearly $3 million that investigators found buried beneath a fish pond.

But Mr. Wen’s lavish tastes were nothing compared with the carnal appetites of his sister-in-law, Xie Caiping, known as “the godmother of the Chongqing underworld.” Prosecutors say she ran 30 illegal casinos, including one across the street from the courthouse. She also employed 16 young men who, according to the state-run press, were exceedingly handsome and obliging.

In recent weeks, Ms. Xie, Mr. Wen and a cavalcade of ranking officials and lowbrow thugs have been players in a mass public trial that has exposed the unseemly relationships among gangsters, police officers and the sticky-fingered bureaucrats.

The spectacle involves more than 9,000 suspects, 50 public officials, a petulant billionaire and criminal organizations that dabbled in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and random acts of savagery, most notably the killing of a man for his unbearably loud karaoke voice.

But like all big corruption cases in China, this one is as much about politics as graft. The political machine in Chongqing, a province-size mega-city of 31 million people in the southwest, has been broken up by a new Communist Party boss who is the son of a revolutionary party veteran and has his eye on higher office.

Mr. Bo, a former trade minister sent to Chongqing to burnish his managerial credentials, has conducted the crackdown in a way that appears devised to maximize national attention. The drawn-out nature of the trial and the release of lurid details of the criminal syndicate have given him a reputation as a leading corruption fighter, though the inquiry has yet to implicate any really high-ranking party officials.

So far six people have been sentenced to death. Ms. Xie got off relatively lightly, receiving an 18-year prison term on Tuesday.

How Mr. Bo’s performance is regarded by the party elite is a matter of speculation. There are some suggestions that his swagger, including boastful comments to the news media, strikes some fellow officials as excessive. Anticorruption campaigns by China’s one-party state are generally calibrated to show resolution in tackling venality, but also to reassure the public that whatever problems are uncovered are localized and effectively contained.

“These guys are all for fighting corruption, but they are a little alarmed by the way Bo Xilai has been going about it and building up his personality,” said Sidney Rittenberg, one of the few American citizens to join the Communist Party here and a confidant of Chinese leaders since 1944. “People I talk to say he’s getting too big for his britches.”

A so-called princeling whose father, was an economic planner and a onetime ally of the paramount leader, Mr. Bo, 60, is already a member of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo. He is often talked about as a future top leader in Beijing, although in the party’s rigid hierarchy the No. 1 posts in the party and the government have already been assigned to other younger officials.

Recent statements by Mr. Bo suggest he understands the perils of drawing too much attention. Two weeks ago, he defended the crackdown, saying he was forced to act by the rampant violence and brazen criminality that had given this perpetually foggy city a reputation for lawlessness.

“The public gathered outside government offices and held up pictures of bloodshed,” he said. “The gangsters slashed people with knives just like butchers killing animals.”

In the three weeks since trials began, the crowds have continued to come, and their stories of bloodshed are indeed horrifying. They press outside the gates of the Fifth Intermediate Court, hoping to glimpse the orange-vested defendants who are paraded through the hearings.

Others desperately seek out reporters willing to hear tales of crimes unpunished. “The bandits used to live in the mountains; now they live in the Public Security Bureau,” said Zheng Yi, a vegetable wholesaler.

Unlike past sweeps that brought down crime bosses and their henchmen, the crackdown in Chongqing has yielded a number of wealthy businessmen and Communist Party officials, exposing the depth of corruption that has resulted from the mixing of state control and free-market economics in China.

Ko-lin Chin, who studies the intermingling of organized crime and government in China, said the line between legitimate business and illegal conduct had become increasingly blurred, although most official corruption involved bribery, not violence.

“As these gangs have become more powerful, their existence depends entirely on the cooperation and tolerance of the Communist Party,” said Mr. Chin, a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers. “But when things get out of hand, as they did in Chongqing, the party can really go after these groups with a vengeance.”

Among those on trial this week is Li Qiang, a local legislator and billionaire who the authorities say owned a fleet of 1,000 cabs and 100 bus routes. So great was his power, they say, that he orchestrated a taxi strike last year that brought the city to a standstill. On trial with him are three government officials suspected of acting as his “protection umbrellas” in exchange for payments of about $100,000 each.

While Mr. Li stood in the dock, more than 200 people gathered outside in the rain, including women who said they were roughed up in October last year when they refused to vacate their homes for a redevelopment project. One of them, Wu Pinghui, 67, said 40 people were herded into a government-owned bus and dumped in the countryside. By the time they made it back, their homes were gone.

“We called 110,” she said, referring to the Chinese emergency number, “but the police said they couldn’t get involved in a government affair.”

Hong Guibi also came to the courthouse. She said the Communist Party chief of her village, enraged when she and her husband refused to give him part of their orchard, watched as thugs attacked the couple with cleavers. Ms. Hong, 47, was critically wounded, and her husband was killed. “The neighbors heard our screams, but they were afraid to do anything,” she said.

Although heartened that so many are being prosecuted, Ms. Hong is still waiting for someone to come after the village chief. “If I could just kneel down in front of Bo Xilai,” she said, “I’m sure he would solve my problem.”

ON Oct. 1, 1959, I took part in a parade for the 10th anniversary of the Communist revolution that led to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. I was a middle-school student in the central city of Xian, and my classmates and I gathered at school before dawn. We marched into the city’s main square, where senior party leaders would review the parade.

As members of the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth organization, we were all in uniform — we boys in crisp white shirts tucked into navy slacks and the girls in white shirts and blue pleated skirts that swayed in the brisk morning breeze. Each of us had a red scarf neatly tied around the neck. We were like meticulously arranged flowers, waiting for inspection.

The senior party leaders showed up late, as usual. By the time they delivered their slogan-filled speeches and initiated the flag-raising ceremony, we had already been standing like statues for several hours, our feet planted to the ground. Nobody was allowed to make a noise or leave the group, even though I badly needed to answer the call of nature. Instead, I raised my arms repeatedly and joined the crowd in shouting: “Long live the Chinese Communist Party! Long live Chairman Mao!”

Standing next to me was a student who seemed to share my anxiety. She was pretty, with closely cropped hair. Her eyes darted around impatiently. We waved our arms, chanting slogans like everyone else.

Suddenly, I saw a trail of tears rolling down her cheeks. I first thought she had been caught up in the revolutionary euphoria, but then I noticed that she seemed to be embarrassed by something. She kept adjusting her skirt with her hands. I looked closer and saw that she had wet herself. I untied my red scarf and tucked it into her hands.

Our political instructor used to tell us that the red colour of our national flag symbolized the blood shed by Communists who had sacrificed their lives for the country. We were told to treat our scarves like parts of the flag. So as I quietly tossed away my stained scarf at the end of the ceremony, a vague sense of fear flashed through my mind.

In 1963, I entered college. All freshmen had to undergo a month of intensive training to prepare for the anniversary parade. On the morning of Oct. 1, we goose-stepped in unison, passing the podium and saluting the leaders. Once again, there were red flags everywhere. Colorful floats depicted another bumper harvest. People shouted slogans at the top of their lungs, touting the so-called accomplishments of the Great Leap Forward campaign. I later heard that more than 20 million Chinese had starved to death as a result of that disastrous program.

It was on the eve of another National Day, in 1968, that the security police suddenly arrested me and put me in a detention center without any explanation. During interrogation, I found out that my “crime” was related to a letter I had written a year before to the Moscow University Library, requesting a copy of “Dr. Zhivago,” which was banned in China as counterrevolutionary. The police had intercepted the letter and had been monitoring me for quite some time.

I was sentenced to three years of re-education in a labour camp, where I spent two National Days behind bars. On those days, prisoners were granted a reprieve from working in the fields. National Day was a holiday for the guards, who simply locked us inside while they went home. We were able to enjoy a day without supervision. More important, every prisoner would get a few morsels of pork in his meal, which normally featured half-rotten vegetables, thin corn gruel and steamed corn buns.

So while the whole country was involved in the Oct. 1 celebration, we huddled together inside our cells, chatting and playing cards, a rare break from the daily grind of hard labour. The parade, the fireworks and the slogan shouting seemed as remote as a half-forgotten dream.

In September 1971, I was released from jail and arrived home a few days before National Day, which was unusually quiet. Later, through the rumor mill, people learned that the plane of Defence Minister Lin Biao had mysteriously crashed in Mongolia. (Lin, once seen as a possible successor to Mao, had fallen from favour.) The authorities scrambled for an appropriate public explanation. Lin’s absence at major public events could certainly fuel speculation that could damage Mao’s reputation. To buy time, the government cancelled the parades that were supposed to glorify the Great Leader and his successor.

Mao soon grew ill and was no longer in the mood to go to Tiananmen and wave to the adoring masses. Red October lost its lustre and we were finally free to celebrate National Day at home.

This Oct. 1, the elaborate parades — and tight control — returned. I watched from the United States as China’s leadership orchestrated a huge celebration to showcase its wealth and military prowess — while the familiar red flags flew over the capital. Tens of thousands of policemen and volunteers were sent in to maintain security. The party tried to control the weather and even regulate the movement of pigeons. Dissidents were under surveillance or in jail. I couldn’t help but think that while China has made great material progress over the last 30 years, Mao is still clearly the patriarch of the Communist Party.

China yesterday celebrated its wealth and rising might with a show of goose-stepping troops, gaudy floats and nuclear-capable missiles in Beijing, 60 years after Mao Zedong proclaimed its embrace of communism.

Tiananmen Square became a hi-tech stage to celebrate the birth of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, with President Hu Jintao, wearing a slate grey 'Mao' suit, and the Communist Party leadership watching the meticulously disciplined show from the Gate of Heavenly Peace over the Square. Here DOMINIC SANDBROOK explains why the West should be so wary of the new superpower.

The bunting is out, the streets have been cleared, the troops are making their final preparations, and even the massive portrait of Mao on the Tiananmen Gate seems to wear a more self-satisfied expression than usual.

Today, China will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule with flowers, fireworks, performances and a huge military parade which will celebrate the country's new-found military might.

The regime has come an enormously long way in six decades, from a society of peasant collective farms, hidden from the world behind a veil of secrecy, to the world's fastest-growing economy, an industrial and military superpower-in-waiting.

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The first tank phalanx receives inspection in a parade of the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on Chang'an Street in central Beijing

But beneath today's orgy of celebrations that marks the anniversary lurks a disturbing reality. Mao's successors may have embraced cut-throat capitalism to a degree that makes even Western economists blanch. But the arrangements for the parade are a reminder that China remains a deeply authoritarian society.

Kites have been banned from the centre of Beijing, pigeons have been culled and soldiers with machineguns are on every street corner. Scientists are even seeding the sky with chemicals to prevent inclement weather spoiling the celebrations.

Tibet has also been closed off to foreigners for the duration - a reminder of China's expansionist ambitions, and of the threat it could pose to world peace in years to come.

Since Chinese history is rarely taught in our schools and universities, it is not surprising that most Britons have only the foggiest notion of what goes on in the world's most populous nation.

Yet when historians look back, it is a safe bet they will see China's rise to power as one of the defining stories of the last century, perhaps eclipsing even the Cold War.

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A mass parade including 200,000 performers and representatives of each wing of the armed forces showing off its latest weaponry passes through Tiananmen Square

When the Communists seized control in 1949, China was a poverty-stricken basket case, ravaged by famine, ethnic tension and feuding between rival warlords.

And in the years that followed, Mao's policies of forced industrialisation and collective farming, as well as his murderous purges of the middle classes, accounted for millions of deaths.

One scholarly estimate suggests that in 40 years, almost 80 million Chinese were slaughtered or died as a result of government policy - making the regime the biggest killer in history.

But now, of course, all that is conveniently forgotten. And British politicians are more likely to pay tribute to China's economic renaissance than to draw attention to the undemocratic brutality of its Communist regime.

There is no doubt that the facts and figures are extraordinary.

Thanks to the regime's embrace of capitalism, China's poverty rate has fallen from 53 per cent to just 8 per cent over the past 20 years.

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China's President Hu Jintao stands on a limousine to inspect the military parade near Tiananmen Gate. A giant portrait of Mao can be seen behind

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China's President Hu Jintao, fifth from left, flanked by former president Jiang Zemin, fifth from right, top legislator Wu Bangguo, fourth from left, Premier Wen Jiabao, fourth from right, and other leaders, applauds as they watch the celebrations

And thanks to its low labour costs, it has become the world's third-largest trading power - which is why when you turn over so many manufactured goods, the words 'MADE IN CHINA' stare up at you.

Once a peasant society, it has the largest number of mobile phone users in the world and the largest number of broadband consumers. It has some of the world's biggest and fastest-growing cities - vast metropolises such as Tianjin, Wuhan and Guangzhou, which are almost unknown in the West but boast populations of more than four million each.

And almost unnoticed, it has become the world's biggest acquirer of foreign public debt.

With some $800 billion of U.S Treasury securities, China now has a hold over the American economy that would have seemed unthinkable a few decades ago.

At one level, of course, all this is cause for celebration. For centuries, China led the world economically, culturally and technologically.

It was the Middle Kingdom, the world's most cohesive and enduring society, which pioneered not just the compass, gunpowder and printing, but porcelain, paperback books and a medieval postal service that would put today's Royal Mail to shame.

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Chinese People's Liberation Army air force jets and helicopters fly in formation over Beijing's central business district

None of us, in other words, should begrudge an industrious and innovative people their return to the top table.

Yet there is a dark side to China's revival - a disturbing instinct for sabre-rattling and neo-imperialism that arguably poses the biggest threat to world peace since the Cold War.

What we often forget about China is that it is not an ordinary nation-state like any other. It is a rigid, highly militarised and intensely nationalistic empire, in which 1.2 billion Han Chinese dominate dozens of other ethnic groups, by force if necessary.

The mountain kingdom of Tibet, for example, was seized at gunpoint in 1950, and its brutal occupation remains a black stain on China's record. And in the remote far western region of Xinjiang - once known as Chinese Turkestan - ethnic tensions have surfaced in bloody fashion in the past few months.

Sixty  years ago, Xinjiang was home to the Turkic Uyghur people, most of them Muslim peasants, craftsmen and silk weavers. But since the Communist Revolution, millions of Han Chinese settlers have poured into the region, responding to government economic incentives.

As a result, traditional Uyghur shops, mosques and bazaars have been torn down and replaced with bland Han-owned malls and offices. And when tension spilled over into ethnic violence earlier this summer, the authorities were quick to blame Uyghur 'terrorists' - even though their own ruthless colonialism clearly lay at the heart of the trouble.

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People watch Chinese People's Liberation Army helicopters fly in formation over Beijing's railway station during today's parade

What terrifies China's neighbours is the thought that they might be in for the same treatment as Tibet and Xinjiang. And the most obvious target for Chinese expansion is the island of Taiwan, the self-styled 'Republic of China' that was established after the American-backed Kuomintang lost the civil war against Mao in 1949 and fled across the narrow Taiwan Strait.

Even though Taiwan now stands as a highly successful state in its own right, the Chinese Communists have never abandoned their ambition to incorporate it into their empire.

And what is more, any government wanting diplomatic relations with China has to forgo relations with Taiwan and formally accept the 'One China' policy - a kind of blackmail to which Britain and the United States. have shamefully acceded.

But China's horizons extend well beyond the Taiwan Strait. Although Chinese spokesmen insist that it has no imperialistic ambitions, the list of border disputes that might provide a pretext for war - the Sudetenlands of the future, perhaps - is disturbingly long.

China currently has territorial disputes with Japan, both Koreas, Bhutan, the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as one of the world's most enduring and most dangerous border disputes with India, which could easily bring two nuclear powers to the brink of war.

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Female soldiers march past Tiananmen Square during the military parade

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Women members of the militia, a civilian reserve force under China's military, salute as they march past Tiananmen Square

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Participants hold heart-shaped balloons during the parade

Perhaps most worrying, however, is the evidence of Chinese expansionism and interference in Africa.

In 1873 the Victorian explorer Sir Francis Galton suggested that one way to modernise the so-called Dark Continent was to fill it with ' industrious, order-loving Chinese', with Africa becoming a 'semi-detached dependency of China'. Such was the outcry that Galton soon dropped the idea. But more than a century later, he seems to have been ahead of his time.

For in the past decade, more than 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa, and the red flag now flutters over jungles and prairies alike.

In the ports of East Africa, Chinese cargo ships are loaded every day with oil, timber and diamonds.

Vast Chinese-owned mines pay African labourers less than £1 a day to scratch out copper for the gigantic smoke-belching cities of East Asia. And deep in the heart of Africa, acres of forest are ripped down every day as timber for China's industrial revolution.

But there is another side to this new Scramble for Africa. For in return, the Chinese are selling African leaders the assault rifles, warplanes and mortars they need for their bloody wars of conquest and ethnic cleansing.

Only last year, Zimbabwe's despotic Robert Mugabe received a cool £200m in Chinese military aid.

And even the brutal slaughter in southern Sudan, in which hundreds of thousands of non-Muslim peasants were murdered by government militias, was carried out with £55m-worth of Chinese weapons, sold to the Sudanese in defiance of a UN arms embargo.

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Performers participate in the parade. It showed everything from airplanes for in-flight refuelling to intercontinental missiles as well as tens of thousands of children in brightly coloured costumes

Meanwhile, China itself is well on the way to becoming one of the world's dominant military powers. Already, its standing army alone has more than 2.25 million men.

And for the past 20 years, the Chinese have been modernising at a staggering rate - ploughing the fruits of their industrial revolution not into welfare programmes, health care or the environmental protection their people so badly need, but into guns, guns and more guns.

It is no accident that the centrepiece of the 60th anniversary celebrations in Beijing is a massive military parade.

Like so many aggressively modernising regimes before them - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union spring to mind - the Chinese leadership clearly equate economic progress with military spending. Only this week, their Defence Minister Liang Guanglie bragged that the parade would ' display the image of a military force, a civilised force, a victorious force'.

With its new J-10 fighter jets, naval destroyers and Cruise missiles, the Chinese army, he said, was a match for any in the Western world. 'This is an extraordinary achievement,' he boasted, 'that speaks of our military's modernisation and the huge change in our technological strength.

' Whenever Western observers voice disquiet about this terrifying military buildup, the Chinese insist that they have no hostile ambitions, or merely put the complaints down to racist scaremongering. But then they would say that.

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Mobile missile defence systems were part of the giant military parade.

And the evidence of their actions - their callous repression in Tibet and Xinjiang, their ruthless suppression-of dissent and free speech at home, even the violence of their bullying 'minders' during the shambolic Olympic torch relay through London last year - tells a very different story.

Of course, China's long march to world domination is by no means inevitable. As academic experts point out, their current economic miracle is built on distinctly shaky political and environmental foundations.

History suggests that any society modernising at such breakneck pace, with millions of peasants flooding from the countryside to the cities, often into low-paid jobs and jerry-built apartments, is bound to suffer enormous social and economic tensions.

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Early-warning aircraft from the Chinese People's Liberation Army air force fly in front of a fighter bomber

At some stage, the Communist Party is likely to come under intense pressure from China's growing middle classes to grant political and environmental reforms. And if the economic miracle turns sour, then the consequences for the regime could be very serious indeed.

But would this be such good news for the West? In an era of globalisation, we have become more dependent on Chinese economic success than most of us realise.

By 2010, the Government predicts, trade between Britain and China will be worth more than £35 billion to the UK. And with many British firms dependent on exports to China, families in Birmingham could suffer just as much as those in Beijing if it all goes wrong.

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Changed times: The moon rises above New York last night, as the Empire State Building is lit in red and yellow in honor of communist China's anniversary

The truth is that we need a buoyant, successful, self- confident China. But we do not need the secretive, repressive, expansionist dragon that many experts see stirring in the Far East.

We have, after all, been here before. Seventy years after the outbreak of the bloodiest conflict in human history, we should all know the dangers of appeasing territorial ambitions, of turning a blind eye to domestic repression, of naively swallowing the propaganda of an authoritarian regime.

The year 1939 is now etched in our collective consciousness.

But unless we play our cards right - unless we use the next few years to coax China towards democracy, to push for human rights reform, and to roll back their new colonialism - then another date might loom larger in our descendants' imagination.

Within ten years, China's rulers plan to have a fully mechanised and computerised army. And within 20, the world's biggest military force could be capable of standing toe to toe with its American counterpart - especially if the U.S. economy continues to stutter and slide.

Imagine a scenario, 30 years from now, where the Western powers' resistance has been sapped by years of economic turmoil, environmental collapse and a bitter struggle for resources.

Imagine that China's Communist leadership, buoyed by decades of military spending, decide to celebrate their 90th anniversary by reabsorbing Taiwan and 'settling' their border disputes once and for all.

It is all too easy to close our eyes and wish for the best. But unless we are careful, what happens in 2039 could make 1939 look like a children's tea party.

We cannot say that we have not been warned.

Red and yellow lights shone from the top of the Empire State Building at dusk Wednesday, a tribute to communist China's 60th anniversary that protesters labelled "blatant approval" of totalitarianism and criticized as inappropriate for an icon in the land of the free.

The building is routinely lit with different colours to mark holidays and big events, but opponents questioned whether it's right to commemorate a sensitive political issue, particularly when China has such a poor human rights record.

About 20 supporters of Tibet, which China has ruled since shortly after communists took over in 1949, protested outside the building during a ceremonial lighting of a scale model inside the lobby. They chanted "No to China's empire; free Tibet now," and held signs reading, "Empire State Building celebrating 60 years of China's oppression."

Lhadon Tethong, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, called the lighting "outright, blatant approval for a communist totalitarian system."

"It's a great public relations coup for the Chinese state," Tethong said as tourists gawked at the protesters. "But on the other hand, it's sure to backfire because the American public and the global public will speak against it."

At the lobby ceremony, building manager Joseph Bellina called the lights a high honor and said he was proud of the relationship between "our countries and our people."

Chinese Consul General Peng Keyu, who pulled the switch on the glass-encased model, said he was "honoured and delighted."

He said China's reforms of the past 30 years have led to greater openness and "tremendous change."

Keyu and Bellina didn't address critics and declined to answer questions.

Journalist and blogger Marc Masferrer questioned legitimizing a government that continues to repress its citizens' freedoms, including their access to media and the Internet.

"I don't think one of our great landmarks should be turned into a platform to honour a regime and a system responsible for as much tragedy and all the other things that come with a repressive system," he told The Associated Press.

Masferrer pointed out that this year is also the 20th anniversary of the violently crushed student-led movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. The People's Liberation Army is believed to have killed hundreds, possibly thousands, of protesters.

Politicians united in their disdain.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat, said the lights should not be used to pay tribute to what he called "an oppressive regime" with a "shameful history on human rights."

Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, said it was "a sad day for New York."

"I am strongly opposed to it or any commemoration of the Communist Chinese revolution. It's one thing to acknowledge the government; it's totally immoral to honor it."

The lights atop the building, which is owned by W&H Properties, are often are changed. For example, Italian colours — red, white and green — commemorate Columbus Day, while green, white and orange are displayed for the India Day parade.

For the Chinese anniversary, the lights were to remain on through early Thursday.

China has stopped issuing travel documents to foreigners seeking to visit occupied Tibet, according to local tour operators, another indicator of the government’s skittishness over the coming anniversary of the Communist victory in 1949.

The ban on new permits, which took effect on Monday, will last at least three weeks, travel agents say.

This is the third time foreign travel to occupied Tibet has been halted since March 2008, when rioting killed at least 22 people in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and left part of its central business district in flames.

Tour operators who arrange the paperwork said the new regulations were issued Sunday by the region’s tourism bureau without explanation. They said that foreigners already holding permits would be allowed to travel to occupied Tibet but with restrictions, including requirements that they travel only with guides and stay in government-approved hotels. Tour operators said they were told that the ban on new permits would remain in effect until at least Oct. 8.

Yong Hong, deputy sales manager at Xigaze China International Travel Service in Lhasa, said the new rules were unexpected and not particularly welcome. “It was a sudden thing, but this year is unusual,” he said, referring to the Oct. 1 National Day celebrations marking the founding of the People’s Republic.

Tourism, which makes up nearly 20 percent of the region’s economy, was battered by the rioting last year but has more than recovered, officials say. Nearly 1.4 million tourists visited the Tibet Autonomous Region in August, a monthly record, according to figures cited by Xinhua, the state news propaganda agency.

Foreign passport holders were barred from visiting Tibet in the months after the riots and again last spring, just before the 50th anniversary of a failed revolt that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader who has long sought greater autonomy for Tibetans living under Chinese rule.

Foreign journalists are also barred from travelling to occupied Tibet except those invited to attend a rare, tightly scripted official tour.

Security has been increased across the country in the weeks leading up to National Day events and has become especially tight in Beijing, which will be the scene of a vast military parade, a fireworks display and a speech by President Hu Jintao.

Sep 16, 2009

“If you choose not to comment on this post, then you don’t deserve to be a Chinese.” This is a typical post on a Chinese BBS. The content of this kind of post is usually a picture of the Chinese flag or the Nanjing Massacre. On one of the most popular Chinese BBS, the Baidu BBS, there are over two thousand comments already on such a post.

GOOGLE'S head of China resigns; Debate over censorship flares up...

The head of Google’s operations in China quit on Friday, ending a controversial four-year tenure that saw the company censored version of its search engine  to gain a foothold in the most populous internet market.

The departure of Kai-Fu Lee comes close on the heels of a renewed debate inside the company about whether Google should pull out of China – a discussion prompted by the latest flare-up of its battle with the Chinese authorities, according to people close to the situation.


That running debate has remained unresolved since the US company introduced a local, censored version of its search engine, Google.cn. Co-founder Sergey Brin in particular is still said by associates to be troubled by the company’s involvement in censorship.

“There are senior people who still wonder about the wisdom and morality of being there,” said one person close to the company’s thinking.

But there was no indication on Friday that Mr Lee’s departure was tied to a change of heart over Google’s presence in China. Alan Eustace, senior vice-president for engineering, credited him with “helping dramatically to im­prove the quality and range of services that we offer in China”.

Mr Lee, a former Microsoft executive, is one of the most prominent figures in the Chinese internet world and enjoys rock-star status in university engineering departments across the country.

His departure from Microsoft became an early lightning rod in the company’s rivalry with Google, prompting lawsuits and angry accusations from each side.

After launching Google.cn, he was able to gain a foothold for the US search engine inside the country, although the company has been repeatedly frustrated in its attempts to make deeper inroads into the market share of Baidu, the local market leader.

Independent research firms put Google’s share of the Chinese search market at about 30 per cent, although internal measures suggest it is only a little more than 20 per cent, according to one person close to the company.

Google has faced several official actions that have served to cap any gains in market share it has managed to achieve. In June, it was ordered to suspend some features on Google.cn over allegations it allowed pornographic content.

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September 6, 2009

By JONATHAN ANSFIELD

 News Web sites in China, complying with secret government orders, are requiring that new users log on under their true identities to post comments, a shift in policy that the country’s Internet users and media have fiercely opposed in the past.

Until recently, users could weigh in on news items on many of the affected sites more anonymously, often without registering at all, though the sites were obligated to screen all posts, and the posts could still be traced via Internet protocol addresses.

But in early August, without notification of a change, news portals like Sina, Netease, Sohu and scores of other sites began asking unregistered users to sign in under their real names and identification numbers, said top editors at two of the major portals affected. A Sina staff member also confirmed the change.

The editors said the sites were putting into effect a confidential directive issued in late July by the State Council Information Office, one of the main government bodies responsible for supervising the Internet in China.

The new step is not foolproof, the editors acknowledged. It was possible for a reporter to register successfully on several major sites under falsified names and ID and cellphone numbers.

But the requirement adds a critical new layer of surveillance to mainstream sites in China, which were already heavily policed. Further regulations of the same nature also appeared to be in the pipeline.

And while the authorities called the measure part of a drive to forge greater “social responsibility” and “civility” among users, they moved forward surreptitiously and suppressed reports about it, said the editors and others in the media industry familiar with the measure, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid putting their jobs at risk.

Asked why the policy was pushed through unannounced, the chief editor of one site said, “The influence of public opinion on the Net is still too big.”

Government Internet regulators have been trying to usher in real-name registration controls since 2003, when they ordered Internet cafes around China to demand that customers show identification, nominally to keep out minors. Last year, lawmakers and regulators began discussing legislation on a more extensive “real name system,” as it is known.

But such proposals have aroused heated debate over the purview of the state to restrict China’s online community, which is the largest in the world at about 340 million people and growing.

Proponents, led by officials and state-connected academics in the information security field, argue that mandatory controls are necessary to help subdue inflammatory attacks, misinformation and other illegal activity deemed to endanger social order. They often note registration requirements on large sites in South Korea to support their point.

Critics counter that government regulation represents an incursion on free speech, individual privacy and the watchdog role of the Web in China.

The critics say sites and users should retain the right to discipline themselves. Given the country’s huge population of Internet users and its failure to guarantee freedom of expression, they argue, the case of China is hardly analogous to that of South Korea.

In 2006, Internet users and the news media rebuffed one official proposal to require real-name registration on blog hosting sites. Star bloggers denounced the notion, while ordinary users overwhelmingly rejected it in surveys conducted on sites like Sina.

In another key test of the policy earlier this year, the legislature in Hangzhou, near Shanghai, passed a regulation that would have placed the requirement on users who comment, blog or play games on sites based there. Amid a popular outcry, however, the city shied away from enforcing the regulation.

Central authorities have gone to new lengths to tame online activity in 2009, a year peppered with politically delicate anniversaries.

Government censors have closed thousands of sites in a continuing war on “vulgarity,” closed liberal forums and blogs for spreading “harmful information,” blocked access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and cut off Internet service where serious unrest has erupted, notably in the Xinjiang region of the west after deadly clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han in July. Increasingly, officials have defended the Web shutdowns on the grounds of national security.

The government recently set off an international furore when it ordered that all computers sold in China come prepackaged with pornography filtering software that authorities could remotely control. Officials were forced to retreat from the order after international companies and trade bodies protested and Chinese hackers showed that the software was designed to block politically offensive content as well.

The authorities had aimed to avoid a similar showdown over the new real-name requirement. “We had no recourse to challenge it,” said the news editor of another portal.

Ta Kung Pao, a Hong Kong-based newspaper loyal to Beijing, first leaked news of the State Council edict in late July. But the report was scrubbed from the paper’s Web site within a few days.

Another state newspaper tried to follow up on the Ta Kung Pao report soon thereafter, the paper’s editors said, but they were forced to abort their article because they were warned that the order was a state secret.

The State Council Information Office had yet to respond to a list of submitted questions about the move.

The new mandate did not appear to affect formerly registered users of the portals. Nor did it affect blog hosts, forums or government news sites like People’s Daily or Xinhua.

Whether because it had an impact mainly on rookie users or because of the void of news about it, bloggers in China were unusually slow to recognize the measure. But those who did were critical.

One commentator on the popular forum Tianya wrote, “Not daring to write one’s real name, in truth, is a form of self-protection for the weak.”

There were signals in the state media in recent weeks that more name registration measures would follow.

An influential advocate of the policy, Fang Bingxing, the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told a forum in August that the “time was ripe” to roll it out widely to bolster information security, newspapers reported.

A trail of comments on Sina thrashed the report.

Late last month, the Communist Party-run Guangming Daily ran a positive story about a city government portal in western China that imposed the requirement on new bloggers, calling it a “forerunner.”

Hu Yong, a new media specialist at Peking University, said government-enforced registration requirements carried long-term side effects.

“Netizens will have less trust in the government, and to a certain extent, the development of the industry will be impeded,” he said.

From a comparison of the most commented-on articles in July and August on a number of portals it was hard to determine whether the volume of posts had been affected so far.
But both editors at two of the major portals affected said their sites had shown marked drop-offs.