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Manchurian Candidate By Josh Kurlantzick 
In last week’s presidential election, Zambian voters should have had plenty to complain about. Endemic poverty in this southern African nation. One of the world’s worst rates of HIV/AIDS, which affects nearly one in six Zambians. Repeated cycles of famine. When I visited eastern Zambia, crowds of emaciated farmers wandered the sides of the road at night, begging for coins and stopping at huts in search of handouts of thin nshima porridge.
Yet much of the Zambian debate centered on a completely different topic: China. Opposition candidate Michael Sata accused Chinese companies, which have invested heavily in Zambian copper mining, of exploiting Zambian workers and undercutting Zambian goods. “Chinese investment has not added any value to the people of Zambia,” Sata told a Zambian radio station, also threatening to toss Chinese companies out of the country. In response, China’s embassy in Zambia became directly involved in the election, very unusual for foreign diplomats in any country, warning that Beijing might sever ties to Zambia if Sata won. The incumbent president, Sata’s opponent in the election, reportedly apologized to Beijing for Sata’s comments.
Sata appears to have lost–he is alleging fraud–but his rhetoric resonated with many sections of Zambian society. Over the last year, in fact, Zambian workers in a Chinese-owned mine had erupted in violent protest against low wages and safety standards, which may have led to an accident last year in which some 50 miners died.
Zambia, in fact, offers a window into a phenomenon American policy makers have only just begun to discover. In a short period of time, China has become a major donor and investor in Africa, and it has begun to play a major role in domestic African politics–not only in Zambia but also across the continent. In fact, China has so quickly amassed power in Africa that it now rivals the United States, France, and international financial institutions for influence–and potentially damages Africa’s economic and political renaissance.
Two years ago, Stéphanie Giry chronicled the beginnings of China’s African safari for THE NEW REPUBLIC, but, since then, Beijing has much more aggressively wooed the continent. African states can provide the natural resources China desperately needs to power its economy. And African countries, especially those just recovering from years of war, also are less likely than Middle Easter oil providers to have established relationships with Western oil consumers. Cultivating African allies offers China crucial support at international forums like the United Nations, where it is beginning to have a more active presence. Perhaps most important, if China can play a major role in Africa, it could stake its claim as a global great power in the world, able to influence events far from its own neighborhood.
China also has developed more sophisticated strategies and tools for wooing Africa. Beijing increasingly advertises its state-directed model of development, which can prove alluring on a continent where neoliberal economic reforms promoted by the West did not deliver promised poverty reduction–and where they sometimes saddled African nations with high debt loads. Beijing has backed up its claims of working for Africans’ benefit by signing cooperation agreements with African nations; in November, it will host a high-profile China-Africa summit, even as American presidents struggle to make it to Africa once a term.
China has become a major aid donor, offering Africa nearly $2 billion in annual aid, along with at least $2 billion in loans, creating programs to train African students, and establishing Chinese language programs at African universities. What’s more, Chinese companies invest in nations no other major powers would consider, and the Chinese government encourages firms to invest in select countries. Chinese construction firms have swarmed into war-torn countries like Sierra Leone, rebuilding factories and hotels.
Many African nations have welcomed China’s new safari. Since 2000, African trade with China has quadrupled, and some African elites and publics have welcomed China’s aid, investment and model of development: Program on International Policy Attitudes polls show strong favorable opinions of China across Africa. Even the head of the African Development Bank has announced that, “We can learn from [the Chinese] how … to move from low to middle income status.” And African leaders clearly are treating China like a great power on the continent, affording Chinese officials and businesspeople the type of welcome and access once reserved for Western leaders.
But, at the same moment, for the first time in decades, Africa has entered the radar screen of international corporations and Western governments. In a world facing a potential peak in production from major Middle Eastern oil fields, Africa’s untapped oil and gas are proving quite attractive. Meanwhile, parts of Africa are posting some of their strongest growth rates since independence. The continent has begun to climb the rankings of the World Bank’s index of domestic environments for doing business.
China’s emergence could threaten this progress. As a Treasury Department paper reportedly warns, growing Chinese loans to Africa, especially at high commercial rates, could threaten billions in recent forgiveness by the World Bank and IMF’s Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. China’s aid to Africa also sometimes comes linked with Chinese investment, a practice major donors shun. The fear is that Chinese investment could contribute to environmental destruction and poor labor standards, since Chinese firms have little experience with green policies or unions at home, and many African nations have powerful union movements.
Worse, if China continues to offer aid without any conditions, it will allow itself to serve as a wedge between developing countries and the West, and it will support Africa’s pariahs. This has already begun to occur. In Angola, Chinese aid has helped the government avoid IMF programs designed to ensure that aid money actually gets the poor. In the Central African Republic, Chinese assistance helped the government weather sanctions after staging a coup, and, in Sudan, China’s refusal to countenance sanctions has rendered the United Nations impotent.
In Zimbabwe, Chinese backing has allowed Robert Mugabe’s government to resist pressure from its democratic African neighbors to open a dialogue with the Zimbabwean opposition. During the run-up to Zimbabwe’s last national election, in fact, China reportedly sent planeloads of T-shirts for supporters of Mugabe’s party, offered the Zimbabwean government jamming devices to be used against independent radio, and sent Zimbabwe riot control gear. At a rally later held on Zimbabwe’s independence day at a stadium in Harare, Mugabe touted his “Look East” policy favoring ties with China. As he spoke, Chinese fighter planes looped over the stadium, which had been built for Zimbabwe by China.
This article was originally published in The New Republic (online), <http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w061002&s=kurlantzick100506>October 5, 2006.
October 9, 2006
N. Korea Reports 1st Nuclear Arms Test
By DAVID E. SANGER <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
WASHINGTON, Monday, Oct. 9 — North Korea <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> said Sunday night that it had set off its first nuclear test, becoming the eighth country in history, and arguably the most unstable and most dangerous, to proclaim that it has joined the club of nuclear weapons states.
The test came just two days after the country was warned by the United Nations Security Council <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org> that the action could lead to severe consequences.
American officials cautioned that they had not yet received any confirmation that the test had occurred. The United States Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude on the Korean Peninsula.
China called the test a “flagrant and brazen” violation of international opinion and said it “firmly opposes” North Korea’s conduct.
Senior Bush administration officials said that they had little reason to doubt the announcement, and warned that the test would usher in a new era of confrontation with the isolated and unpredictable country run by President Kim Jong-il <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/_kim_jong_il/index.html?inline=nyt-per>.
Early Monday morning, even before the test was confirmed, Bush administration officials were holding conference calls to discuss ways to further cut off a country that is already subject to sanctions, and hard-liners said the moment had arrived for neighboring countries, especially China and Russia, to cut off the trade and oil supplies that have been Mr. Kim’s lifeline.
In South Korea, the country that fought a bloody war with the North for three years and has lived with an uneasy truce and failed efforts at reconciliation for more than half a century, officials said they believed that an explosion occurred around 10:36 p.m. New York time — 11:36 a.m. Monday in Korea.
They identified the source of the explosion as North Hamgyong Province, roughly the area where American spy satellites have been focused for several years on a variety of suspected underground test sites.
That was less than an hour after North Korean officials had called their counterparts in China and warned them that a test was just minutes away. The Chinese, who have been North Korea’s main ally for 60 years but have grown increasingly frustrated by the its defiance of Beijing, sent an emergency alert to Washington through the United States Embassy in Beijing. Within minutes, President Bush was notified, shortly after 10 p.m., by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, that a test was imminent.
North Korea’s decision to conduct the test demonstrated what the world has suspected for years: the country has joined India, Pakistan and Israel as one of the world’s “undeclared” nuclear powers. India and Pakistan conducted tests in 1998; Israel has never acknowledged conducting a test or possessing a weapon. But by actually setting off a weapon, if that is proven, the North has chosen to end years of carefully crafted and diplomatically useful ambiguity about its abilities.
The North’s decision to set off a nuclear device could profoundly change the politics of Asia.
The test occurred only a week after Japan installed a new, more nationalistic prime minister, Shinzo Abe <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/shinzo_abe/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, and just as the country was renewing a debate about whether its ban on possessing nuclear weapons — deeply felt in a country that saw two of its cities incinerated in 1945 — still makes strategic sense.
And it shook the peninsula just as Mr. Abe was arriving in South Korea for the first time as prime minister, in an effort to repair a badly strained relationship, having just visited with Chinese leaders in Beijing. It places his untested administration in the midst of one of the region’s biggest security crises in years, and one whose outcome will be watched closely in Iran and other states suspected of attempting to follow the path that North Korea has taken.
Now, Tokyo and Washington are expected to put even more pressure on the South Korean government to terminate its “sunshine policy” of trade, tourism and openings to the North — a policy that has been the source of enormous tension between Seoul and Washington since Mr. Bush took office.
The explosion was the product of nearly four decades of work by North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries. The nation of 23 million people appears constantly fearful that its far richer, more powerful neighbors — and particularly the United States — will try to unseat its leadership. The country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, emerged from the Korean War determined to equal the power of the United States, and acutely aware that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had requested nuclear weapons to use against his country.
But it took decades to put together the technology, and only in the past few years has the North appeared to have made a political decision to speed forward. “I think they just had their military plan to demonstrate that no one could mess with them, and they weren’t going to be deterred, not even by the Chinese,” a senior American official who deals with the North said late Sunday evening. “In the end, there was just no stopping them.”
But the explosion was also the product of more than two decades of diplomatic failure, spread over at least three presidencies. American spy satellites saw the North building a good-size nuclear reactor in the early 1980’s, and by the early 1990’s the C.I.A. <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org> estimated that the country could have one or two nuclear weapons. But a series of diplomatic efforts to “freeze” the nuclear program — including a 1994 accord signed with the Clinton administration — ultimately broke down, amid distrust and recriminations on both sides.
Three years ago, just as President Bush was sending American troops toward Iraq, the North threw out the few remaining weapons inspectors living at their nuclear complex in Yongbyon, and moved 8,000 nuclear fuel rods they had kept under lock and key. Those rods contained enough plutonium, experts said, to produce five or six nuclear weapons, though it is unclear how many the North now stockpiles.
For years, some diplomats assumed that the North was using that ambiguity to trade away its nuclear capability, for recognition, security guarantees, aid and trade with the West. But in the end, the country’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, who inherited the mantle of leadership from his father, still called the “Great Leader,” appears to have concluded that the surest way of getting what he seeks is to demonstrate that he has the capability to strike back if attacked.
Assessing the nature of that ability is difficult. If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if American “sniffer” planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of nuclear byproducts in the air.
Even then, it is not clear that the North could fabricate that bomb into a weapon that could fit atop its missiles, one of the country’s few significant exports.
But the big fear about North Korea, American officials have long said, has less to do with its ability to lash out than it does with its proclivity to proliferate. The country has sold its missiles and other weapons to Iran, Syria and Pakistan; at various moments in the six-party talks that have gone on for the past few years, North Korean representatives have threatened to sell nuclear weapons. But in a statement issued last week, announcing that it intends to set off a test, the country said it would not sell its nuclear products.
The fear of proliferation prompted President Bush to declare in 2003 that the United States would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. He has never defined what he means by “tolerate,” and on Sunday night Tony Snow, Mr. Bush’s press secretary, said that, assuming the report of the test is accurate, the United States would now go to the United Nations <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org> to determine “what our next steps should be in response to this very serious step.”
Nuclear testing is often considered a necessary step to proving a weapon’s reliability as well as the most forceful way for a nation to declare its status as a nuclear power.
“Once they do that, it’s serious,” said Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the nation’s nuclear arms. “Otherwise, the North Koreans are just jerking us around.”
Networks of seismometers that detect faint trembles in the earth and track distant rumbles are the best way to spot an underground nuclear test.
The big challenge is to distinguish the signatures of earthquakes from those of nuclear blasts. Typically, the shock waves from nuclear explosions begin with a sharp spike as earth and rock are compressed violently. The signal then tends to become fuzzier as surface rumblings and shudders and after shocks create seismologic mayhem.
With earthquakes, it is usually the opposite. A gentle jostling suddenly becomes much bigger and more violent.
Most of the world’s seismic networks that look for nuclear blasts are designed to detect explosions as small as one kiloton, or equal to 1,000 tons of high explosives. On instruments for detecting earthquakes, such a blast would measure a magnitude of about 4, like a small tremor.
Philip E. Coyle III, a former head of weapons testing at the Pentagon and former director of nuclear testing for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/l/lawrence_livermore_national_laboratory/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, a weapons-design center in California, said the North Koreans could learn much from a nuclear test even if it was small by world standards or less than an unqualified success.
“It would not be totally surprising if it was a fizzle and they said it was a success because they learned something,” he said. “We did that sometimes. We had a missile defense test not so long ago that failed, but the Pentagon said it was a success because they learned something, which I agree with. Failures can teach you a lot.”
William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and Thom Shanker from Washington.
October 4, 2006
North Koreans Say They Plan a Nuclear Test
By DAVID E. SANGER <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — North Korea <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/northkorea/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> announced Tuesday that it intended to conduct its first nuclear test, prompting warnings from Tokyo to Washington that an underground explosion would lead to a sharp response and could undermine the security balance in Asia.
North Korea did not say when it would try to test a weapon, and experts inside and outside the Bush administration said the announcement itself was a negotiating ploy, intended to force the White House into lifting economic sanctions and holding one-on-one talks with North Korea.
American intelligence officials said they saw no signs that a test was imminent. But they cautioned that two weeks ago, American officials who had reviewed recent intelligence reports said American spy satellites had picked up evidence of indeterminate activity around what is thought to be North Korea’s main test site. It was unclear to them whether the activity was part of plans for a test, or perhaps a feint related to last month’s visit to Washington by President Roh Moo-hyun <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/roh_moo_hyun/index.html?inline=nyt-per> of South Korea <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/southkorea/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>.
At that meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Roh discussed the possibility of a test, and Mr. Roh said the event would “change the nature” of South Korea’s policy of economic engagement with the North, Mr. Roh told Americans he met afterward.
But the two leaders did not appear to have a coordinated strategy, and a senior Asian diplomat in Washington said Tuesday that “no one is quite sure how to respond” if the North conducted a test in the near future.
In public, the Bush administration’s response was muted and left the American response as unclear as the North Korean threat.
North Korea has long possessed plutonium fuel to manufacture nuclear weapons, and American intelligence agencies say they believe the country expanded its fuel stockpile in recent years so that it could now make roughly six to eight weapons, and perhaps more. That inventory was increased, North Korea says, after the eviction of international inspectors in early 2003, just as the Bush administration was focused on the invasion of Iraq.
North Korea claimed more than a year ago that it possessed a “nuclear deterrent,” but the absence of a test has created a diplomatic ambiguity, allowing China <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> to raise doubts about how far the country had progressed, and giving Washington room after President Bush’s declaration in his first term that he would never “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea.
It is unclear whether the North Koreans have determined that ambiguity is no longer in their interests. In a statement issued Tuesday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that “the U.S. extreme threat of a nuclear war and sanctions and pressure compel the D.P.R.K. to conduct a nuclear test, an essential process for bolstering nuclear deterrent, as a self-defense measure in response.” North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
But earlier this month a North Korean general, Ri Chan-bok, told a visiting American expert, Selig S. Harrison, that no test was necessary.
Mr. Harrison quoted General Ri as saying last week: “If we have an underground test it could have radioactive leakage. These rumors are spread by U.S. agencies to smear us. I have never heard indications of a nuclear test in our government or armed forces.”
In a statement, Frederick Jones, the National Security Council <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_council/index.html?inline=nyt-org> spokesman, said a test would “severely undermine our confidence in North Korea’s commitment to denuclearization” and “pose a threat to peace and security in Asia and the world.”
“A provocative action of this nature would only further isolate the North Korean regime and deny the people of the North the benefits offered to them” in six-nation talks that have not reconvened in more than a year, the statement said.
But behind closed doors the announcement touched off a flurry of meetings, as officials wrestled with uncertain intelligence, questions about whether China or South Korea could prevent a test and the possibility that a test could take place before the Congressional elections.
The American statement did not draw the lines in the sand that marked the nuclear standoffs of the 1990’s, when the Clinton administration began reinforcing American forces on the Korean Peninsula in response to a threat by the North to convert its supply of spent nuclear reactor fuel into bombs.
But American officials, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak about North Korean policy, have recently said the administration assumes that sooner or later, North Korea will conduct a test. “You could argue that it wouldn’t be an all-bad thing,” one administration hawk said, “because it would finally unify the Chinese, and the Russians and the South Koreans,” all of whom have been reluctant to pressure North Korea.
Michael Green, who handled North Korea issues for the National Security Council until he left the White House last year, said, “I think that the evidence has grown, especially with the missile launch, that North Korea has its own escalation ladder, and they would agree to postpone a test only for the right price.”
Mr. Green said he thought it was unlikely that North Korea’s price would be met, and he said he thought the North had “calculated that they can take the heat from China and Japan <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/japan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>, and they are not losing much from South Korea anyway.”
In Tokyo, North Korea’s sudden announcement was the first international test for Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/shinzo_abe/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, a nationalist who has vowed to make security a top priority. Mr. Abe warned North Korea against the test in stern terms rarely heard in the cautious language of Japanese diplomacy.
“Japan and the world absolutely will not tolerate a nuclear test,” he told reporters, in a statement worded more sharply than the Bush administration’s. “The international community would respond harshly.”
[On Wednesday, China urged North Korea to "exercise necessary calm and restraint," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, said in a statement reported by Reuters from Beijing. But he also warned other countries to "peacefully resolve their mutual concerns through dialogue" and "not take actions that escalate tensions."]
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/condoleezza_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per> told reporters in Cairo, where she met with several Arab counterparts on regional issues, including Iran <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo>’s nuclear program, that the announcement was disturbing and that a nuclear test would be “a very provocative act by the North Koreans.”
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea; Martin Fackler from Tokyo; and Philip Shenon from Cairo.
China: Letter to President Hu Jintao
Stop harassment of advocates for social justice
September 29, 2006
President Hu Jintao
People’s Republic of China
Zhongnanhai, Xichengqu, Beijing
People’s Republic of China
Dear President Hu,
We, the undersigned human rights advocates, lawyers, and scholars, write to urge your commitment to ensuring the civil rights of advocates for social justice. We note with concern the sharp increase in official retaliation against such advocates and their families through persistent harassment, banishment, detention, arrest, and imprisonment. We note, too, the frequent use of state secrets charges to discourage social activism.
For the international community to take seriously China’s oft-stated commitment to a rule of law, and for China’s own citizens to trust the judicial system to redress legitimate grievances, it is urgent that China’s central leadership not look the other way when local courts and law enforcement officials ignore China’s laws and legal procedures with impunity. It is equally urgent that judicial authorities throughout China cease to use China’s state secrets laws to prevent defendants in politically sensitive cases from exercising their rights to fair and impartial hearings.
Several recent cases cast doubt on your government’s willingness to take those principled steps. Four such cases are of particular concern, those of rights defenders Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, a legal activist, Zhao Yan, a journalist, and Hu Jia, a grassroots HIV/AIDS activist. Their apprehension, the charges against Messrs. Gao, Chen, and Zhao, Mr. Chen’s and Mr. Zhao’s subsequent trials and sentencing, and Mr. Hu’s forcible removal to a police station without a warrant are representative of China’s legal system at its worst. We urge the immediate releases of those still held, the dismissal of all charges, and the immediate restoration of Mr. Gao’s license to practice law.
Beijing public security officers seized Mr. Gao, a prominent human rights defense lawyer, on August 15, 2006, in Shandong province. On August 18, Xinhua reported that he was detained on suspicion of involvement in “criminal activities.” His whereabouts are unknown. Police officers illegally prevent access to his home, as they so often do to the families of lawyers who assist people in asserting their rights; his wife, daughter, and son may not leave; no one is allowed in.
All Mr. Gao’s activities were peaceful and legal. He defended journalist and former professor Zheng Yichun whose Internet writings questioned official policies, house church pastor Cai Zhuohua who freely distributed bibles, and fellow legal activist Yang Maodong, better known as Guo Feixiong. He also defended Beijing residents forcibly evicted from their homes, rural residents whose lands were seized, Falungong practitioners, and striking workers.
However, in November 2005, after Mr. Gao continued to protest against local officials’ abuse of power, sent an open letter to you and to Premier Wen Jiabao urging that the persecution of Falungong practitioners cease, and took on more politically sensitive cases, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice suspended his law firm, the Shengzhi Law Office in Beijing, for one year. In December, his license to practice was revoked.
Mr. Gao made good his promise to “continue to work for the rights of ordinary citizens, as an ordinary person myself if they refuse to let me operate as a lawyer.” On February 4, 2006, he and Mr. Hu initiated a symbolic hunger strike movement to draw attention to official mistreatment of human rights defenders.
Mr. Gao was particularly concerned, as we are, with retaliation against Chen Guangcheng, sentenced on August 24 by local Yinan county (Shandong province) officials to four years and three months in prison for allegedly organizing a mob to disturb traffic and willfully damaging public property. Mr. Chen, a blind legal activist, had investigated villagers’ claims that local officials used illegal practices to enforce population control laws. The National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), responding to his concerns, agreed that illegal family planning practices did exist. It is our belief that the charges were baseless and brought in response to his activism. It would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Mr. Chen, who was forcibly detained at home and denied any means of communication, to organize a mob or damage public property. Furthermore, even if the charges were true, the sentence was disproportionate to the alleged offenses.
We are equally concerned about the physical attacks on Mr. Chen’s legal team. Prior to the trial, local officials and unknown assailants prevented the team from collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses. On the day of the trial, Mr. Chen was represented in court by two lawyers whom he had never met because his own lawyers were prevented from attending the trial. One of Mr. Chen’s lawyers, law professor Xu Zhiyong, was accused of petty theft and beaten, then held by the police until Mr. Chen’s trial was over.
Other activists, such as Hu Jia, were prevented from going to Shandong to demonstrate support for Mr. Chen, or apprehended when they arrived. In another instance, local Yinan county police detained writer Deng Yongliang when he arrived on August 18, then transferred him back to Xi’an. As of this writing, it is unclear whether he is still in detention. On August 19, security personnel told Zhao Xin, executive director of the Empowerment and Rights Institute, a Chinese human rights NGO, to leave Beijing and return to his home town in Yunnan province. Mr. Zhao had spoken out in defense of both Chen Guangcheng and Gao Zhisheng. Two Beijing law professors, Teng Biao of the Chinese University of Politics and Law and Xu Zhiyong from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, were repeatedly warned by their universities to stay away from the case.
Zhao Yan, a former journalist for the official Zhongguo Gaige (China Reform) magazine, used the media to expose government mistreatment of farmers and publicly assisted many who tried to reclaim their land or realize just compensation. State Security Bureau agents kept Mr. Zhao under surveillance and harassed him. Under pressure, Mr. Zhao resigned from the magazine in April 2004; a month later he began work as a researcher for the New York Times. Six months later he was formally arrested for “leaking state secrets to a foreigner” after the New York Times correctly predicted that former president Jiang Zemin would resign from his last official post. The New York Times and Mr. Zhao consistently maintained that he was not the source of the information.
On June 1, 2005, when no evidence to sustain the state secrets charge had been found and Zhao’s time in detention had exceeded allowable limits, the government brought an unrelated fraud charge based on an alleged 2001 incident. According to the government, Mr. Zhao agreed, in exchange for approximately U.S.$2,500, to use his State Council connections to help a local official avoid serving an 18-month re-education through labor sentence. Mr. Zhao has denied he ever took money and has asked for a lie-detector test. On August 25, 2006, two months after his closed trial, the court dismissed the state secrets charge but convicted Mr. Zhao of fraud and sentenced him to a three-year term.
A charge of state secrets may be justified in the interest of public order or national security. In Mr. Zhao’s case, neither was compromised by the New York Times prediction. What was compromised was the ability of Mr. Zhao’s lawyers to act as defense counsel, in particular because the authorities limited the lawyers’ access to their client and to the prosecutor’s evidence and refused to hear the defense witnesses.
On September 7, 2006, some dozen plainclothes officers seized Mr. Hu Jia from his home in Beijing and insisted he accompany them to a local police station. They offered no identification nor did they produce a warrant. He was released after twelve hours, but was warned that he was suspected of “criminal activities.” The following day, September 8, police officers took him back to the station for another day of interrogation. Mr. Hu has been held in house arrest since mid-July for his on-going attempts to investigate and publicize the disappearances and detentions of other rights activists. At the time he was seized, he was trying to arrange legal help for Mr. Gao and to collect information on additional disappearances. In February 2006, Mr. Hu “disappeared” for over a month following his and Mr. Gao’s initiation of a rotating symbolic hunger strike. Mr. Hu’s early activism targeted environmental and HIV/AIDS-related abuses.
These incidents, taken together, suggest that those who try to make Chinese officials more accountable, whether through journalism, legal activism, or other peaceful and internationally recognized channels, will be prosecuted through a legal system that lacks impartiality and denies them basic guarantees of fairness. So long as the government may, with impunity, persecute and punish those whom they perceive as challenging its collective power, the international community and China’s friends and allies will remain deeply skeptical about China’s commitment to reform, to transparency, and to the rule of law.
We therefore urge again that Messrs. Chen, Gao, and Zhao be released immediately with all their rights fully restored, and that Mr. Hu no longer be confined to his home. We urge that the overhaul of state secret laws, in order to bring them into conformity with international standards, be made a priority. We urge that local officials be held accountable when they use the law to punish and harass would-be challengers. And we urge your public commitment to use your office to further these reforms sooner rather than later.
Sincerely,
R. David Arkush
Professor & Director of Graduate Studies
Department of History
The University of Iowa
Iowa, U.S.
Robert Arsenault
President
International League for Human Rights
New York, U.S.
Harry G. Barnes Jr.
Retired Diplomat
Vermont, U.S.
Richard Baum
Director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies
UCLA Political Science Department
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Jean-Philippe Beja
Senior Research Fellow
CNRS, CERI-Sciences-po
Paris, France
Robert L. Bernstein
Retired Chairman and President
Random House
New York, U.S.
Thomas P. Bernstein
Professor of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, U.S.
Michel Bonnin
Professor
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Paris, France
Anita Chan
Visiting Fellow
Contemporary China Centre
Research School of Pacific & Asian Studies
Australian National University
Canberra, Australia
Gordon G. Chang
Author
New Jersey, U.S.
Peg Christoff, PhD.
China Debate Series Manager
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington, DC, U.S.
Jerome A. Cohen
Professor
New York University Law School
Adjunct Senior Fellow
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, U.S.
Joan Lebold Cohen
Art Critic
Associate
Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies
Harvard University
Cambridge, U.S.
Alison W. Conner
Director of International Programs
University of Hawaii School of Law
Honolulu, U.S.
George T. Crane
Professor of Political Science
Williams College
Massachusetts, U.S.
Meg Davis
Anthropologist
New York, U.S.
Michael C. Davis
Professor of Law
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
June Teufel Dreyer
Professor of Political Science
University of Miami
Florida, U.S.
Dr. Chongyi Feng
Associate Professor in China Studies
University of Technology
Sydney, Australia
Edward Friedman
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.
Felice D. Gaer
Director
Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights
New York, New York, U.S.
Merle Goldman
Professor Emerita
Boston University
Massachusetts, U.S.
Associate
Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies
Harvard University
Cambridge, U.S.
Justice Richard J. Goldstone
Former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda
South Africa
R. Scott Greathead
Board Member
Human Rights First
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Human Rights in China
New York, U.S.
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Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies
Centre for Asian Studies
University of Adelaide, Australia
Paul Hoffman
Civil Rights Lawyer
Schonbrun, DeSimone, Seplow, Harris & Hoffman
Hermosa Beach, California, U.S.
Sharon Hom
Executive Director
Human Rights in China
New York, U.S.
Carol Jones
Professor
University of Glamorgan Law School
Wales, U.K.
Richard C. Kagan
Professor Emeritus
Hamline University
Minnesota, U.S.
David Kelly
Senior Research Fellow
East Asian Institute
National University of Singapore
Singapore
Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
International Secretary
International PEN
Washington, DC, U.S.
Xiaorong Li
Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland, U.S.
Perry Link
Professor of East Asian Studies
Princeton University
New Jersey, U.S.
Daniel Lynch
Associate Professor
School of International Relations
University of Southern California
California, U.S.
Roderick MacFarquhar
Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science
Harvard University
Cambridge, U.S.
James Mann
Author-in-Residence
Johns Hopkins SAIS
Washington, DC, U.S.
Jonathan Mirsky
Journalist
London, U.K.
Robin Munro
Research Associate
SOAS Law Department
London, U.K.
Andrew J. Nathan
Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science
Columbia University
New York, U.S.
Eva Pils
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Cornell University Law School
Ithaca, New York, U.S.
Victoria Riskin
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Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Barnett R. Rubin
Director of Studies and Senior Fellow
Center on International Cooperation
New York University
New York, U.S.
Sophie Richardson, PhD.
Deputy Director
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Human Rights Watch
New York, U.S.
Allan Roth
Professor Emeritus
Rutgers University
New Jersey, U.S.
Kenneth Roth
Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
New York, U.S.
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The Bubble Factory
Former COO of MCA/Universal
Song Yongyi
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California State University
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Hatla Thelle
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Steve Tsang, MA, DPhil. (Oxon)
Louis Cha Fellow and University Reader in Politics
St. Antony’s College
Oxford, U.K.
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Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’
The Hague, Netherlands
Peter Van Ness, PhD.
Contemporary China Centre and Department of International Relations
Australian National University
Canberra, Australia
Xiao Qiang
Director
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The Graduate School of Journalism
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, California, U.S.
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Emeritus Professor of International Relations
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, U.K.
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Washington, DC, U.S., Columbia University, U.S.
Yu Maochun
China specialist
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cc: Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong
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October 2, 2006
Korean Virtually Assured of Top Job at U.N.
By WARREN HOGE <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/warren_hoge/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
UNITED NATIONS <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, Oct. 2 — Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister of South Korea, was virtually assured of being selected as the next secretary general of the United Nations Monday after winning overwhelming support in a final informal poll of the Security Council.
The council scheduled a formal vote for next Monday to make its verdict official, a decision that should lead to Mr. Ban’s being elevated to the position of the world’s most important international civil servant on Jan. 1.
Secretary General Kofi Annan <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/kofi_annan/index.html?inline=nyt-per> steps down Dec. 31 after two five-year terms in office, and under United Nations procedures, the 15-member Security Council selects one name and sends it to the 192-member General Assembly <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/g/general_assembly/index.html?inline=nyt-org> for appointment.
Mr. Ban nailed down his bid today by winning his fourth straight informal poll, this one designed with separately colored blue ballots to show whether any of the five veto-bearing permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — opposed him.
In a contest in which the ambassadors had the options of voting “encourage,” “discourage” or “no opinion,” Mr. Ban won 14 positives, including from all five permanent members, and one “no opinion” from one of the 10 rotating members.
There were objections from permanent members signaling potential vetoes of all five other candidates.
Mr. Ban will be inheriting the leadership of a global organization with 9,000 workers, $5 billion in annual spending and tasks ranging from education, health care and emergency assistance to areas hit by natural disaster to peacekeeping in nations emerging from conflicts.
He also takes over at a moment when the United Nations has been shaken by management lapses and scandals and faces continuing demands for overhauling its procedures. At the same time, it is a moment when the United Nations finds itself back at the center of many of the world’s most intractable problems in places like Lebanon, Sudan, Iran, Kosovo and North Korea.
Mr. Ban has said in interviews and speeches that he would devote particular attention to efforts to broker a settlement in the Middle East.
Mr. Ban is a soft-spoken man who has in six months of campaigning around the world had to learn the Western art of self-promotion after early audiences complained they found his laid-back self-presentation underwhelming. He still frequently cites his own “humility” in exercising responsibility but argues it is an asset that should not be confused with indecisiveness.
In response to worries about whether he has the strength and presence to be secretary general, Mr. Ban has pointed to his leadership in the weighty and sensitive talks aimed at ending the nuclear standoff with North Korea.
Mr. Ban is familiar with the United Nations, where he served as first secretary at the South Korean mission from 1974 to 1978 and was chief assistant to Han Seung Soo, the General Assembly president, in 2001. He also has served as director of the United Nations division at the foreign ministry in Seoul.
His election will carry great resonance in South Korea, a country created by the United Nations in 1948 and defended by United Nations-authorized troops in the Korean War.
In his lifetime, South Korea has been a model for development, transformed from a war-torn impoverished country into one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Mr. Ban has been a top official in the Korean embassy in New Delhi and ambassador to Austria. He became foreign minister in January 2004.
Mr. Ban says he first dreamed of becoming a diplomat when as an 18-year-old student visiting Washington in 1962 he met President John F. Kennedy <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/john_fitzgerald_kennedy/index.html?inline=nyt-per> at the White House.
He has had extensive experience with the United States and is considered politically close to Washington.
Mr. Ban won all four informal polls. Five of the six candidates were Asian in a year seen as Asia’s turn at the top job. The last Asian secretary general was U Thant of Burma, who left office in 1971.
As in the previous three votes, the second finisher was Shashi Tharoor, 50, the undersecretary general for public information. He ended up with 10 positives, three negatives and two no opinions.
The other four, who trailed far behind, were Vaira Vike- Freiberga, the president of Latvia, the only woman and non-Asian in the race; Ashraf Ghani, 57, a former finance minister of Afghanistan and current chancellor of Kabul University; Surakiart Sathirathai, 47, the deputy to Thaksin Shinawatra <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/thaksin_shinawatra/index.html?inline=nyt-per>, the prime minister of Thailand deposed in a military coup last month, and Prince Zeid al-Hussein, 42, Jordan’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Jayantha Dhanapala, 67, of Sir Lanka, a former undersecretary general for disarmament, withdrew from the race on Friday after drawing only three positive votes in balloting on Thursday.
When I lived in Tokyo I went to this place a few times. I liked it a lot, it seemed to be like a bohemian village in this giant sea of conformity. I understand the economic incentives and the complaints of the baba and oyagi, however it seems that they could find a better way to do things.
I think this is cultural though. I am 100% sure that most older Japanese see little value in this area. I can easily see them thinking this is just a place for strange young people to act badly (similar to how any young urban enclave is viewed by an older more consevative generation)…but especially so in Japan due to its confucianist ideas of the beauty of conformity.
Also as my wife has told me many times in indirect ways, Japanese people tend not to value old things…well at least not old things in Japan. They might fly half way around the world to Italy or France on vacaction to see old Churchs for the archeteture but there are very few old buildings in Tokyo, because they constantly tear them down (well yeah and during WWII they were burned down). My wife said that old things have ghost associated with them and it is better to start fresh. :-O
October 2, 2006
Tokyo Journal 
Splitting a Hip Neighborhood, in More Ways Than One
By MARTIN FACKLER <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/martin_fackler/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
TOKYO, Oct. 1 — With its vintage clothing stores, live music clubs and cheap noodle shops, Shimokitazawa is Tokyo’s answer to Greenwich Village, an epicenter of youth culture in one of Asia’s trendiest metropolises.
The neighborhood is popular for its cozy residential feel, drawing hordes of students and young office workers, who regularly throng its maze of narrow lanes and alleys.
Its tiny shops, many in converted houses or low-rise apartments, often bear names that recall a counterculture across the Pacific: the Village Vanguard Diner, Haight Ashbury, Mojo Rising.
But a shadow has fallen straight across the heart of this pulsing neighborhood. In four years, city officials plan to start building an 81-foot-wide thoroughfare that will slice Shimokitazawa in two.
The road has set off a rare battle for preservation in a country where big construction projects have long been welcomed as progress and used to grease the wheels of politics.
The fight pits boutique and bar owners, among them the first bearers of hippie culture to the neighborhood three decades ago, against city hall and older residents who resent the relative newcomers.
In cities from New York to Bucharest, the practice of plowing large roads through urban communities has been widely discredited. But Tokyo is only just beginning to consider the social costs, after decades of covering its medieval moats and rivers with highways, and replacing tile-roofed dwellings with featureless concrete buildings.
“Until now, nobody cared if we destroyed the culture and environment of Tokyo,” said Mikiko Ishikawa, a professor at Keio University here who specializes in urban planning. “People are gradually coming to understand that these things matter, too.”
For many Tokyoites, the charm of Shimokitazawa (pronounced SHEE-mo-kee-tah-zah-wah) lay in the fact that it had escaped such redevelopment. A sleepy residential community on the city’s outskirts, it escaped American wartime bombings. After Japan’s defeat, it sprang to life as a bustling market for United States military surplus foods and clothing.
Another transformation occurred in the 1970’s, when its wooden homes and twisting prewar alleyways attracted musicians, actors and anti-Vietnam War students.
So three years ago, when city officials gathered 1,500 residents and shop owners to announce the $140 million planned road, along with lifting building height restrictions, they were greeted with dismay and anger.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Kenzo Kaneko, 41, an architect who lives here. “They just announced the death of the neighborhood, without asking us what we thought.”
Mr. Kaneko and friends organized Save the Shimokitazawa, one of a handful of opposition groups that quickly appeared and have continued to protest.
On a recent Saturday night, more than 300 protesters — older ones with shoulder-length graying hair tied back in ponytails, younger ones wearing paisley dresses or high-top sneakers and combat fatigues — marched through the neighborhood holding candles.
The marchers gathered in front of a Catholic church, a small underground theater and a strip of closet-size cocktail bars, among the hundreds of buildings the road is set to destroy.
“We came to this neighborhood because it was different and unique,” said Yutaka Oki, 61, who owns a live jazz club he opened here in 1975. “If this road gets built, this atmosphere will be completely destroyed.”
But the project also has many supporters, among them the Shimokitazawa shop owners’ unions, which were founded right after World War II. They hope a broad boulevard will provide an escape route in an earthquake, and make it easier for buses and taxis to run through the neighborhood.
Kuniyoshi Yoshida, a 71-year-old landowner who leads one of the unions, said that as the neighborhood, like the rest of Japan, grows older, residents place a higher priority on safety and convenience. He also said the newcomers had no right to complain, since most have refused to join his union and participate in neighborhood cleanups.
That is not to mention the host of troubles that they have brought, he says: the crowds, graffiti, loud music, drunken revelers urinating on homes.
“They say this road will destroy the neighborhood,” he said. “But we original residents see it as progress.”
Supporters and opponents alike agree the project is the work of the so-called road tribe. These are politicians who use public works to win votes, and lard their campaign chests with construction-related donations.
The government spends $130 billion per year on building roads, said Takayoshi Igarashi, a professor of urban policy at Hosei University in Tokyo. “Roads are still the king of kings in Japanese politics,” he said.
In Shimokitazawa, the road’s leading backer is Noriyuki Kumamoto, the boss of Setagaya Ward, which houses the neighborhood. He has refused to be interviewed by reporters because of the road debate. But at a news conference in June, he said he wanted the road to ensure Shimokitazawa’s vibrancy for years to come.
Urban planning experts say such comments reflect a widely held belief in Japan that new roads and highways only benefit communities.
“We’re not just splitting Shimokitazawa,” said Masahiko Toyama of the ward’s roads department. “We’re adding good things.”
Road opponents are pessimistic about their chances of stopping the project. The highest hurdle, they say, is the reluctance of most residents to speak out.
Of the neighborhood’s 1,500 shops, about 500 have joined a new alternative shop owners’ union that opposes the road. But many other shop owners privately say they are afraid to oppose the road because of longstanding ties to the traditional shop owners’ unions.
Moreover, many say privately that they are conflicted about a project that will also make them rich. Landowners along the road’s path, who have subsisted for years on their tiny shops, now face the prospect of instant wealth as the city is expected to pay top yen for land.
“Many are sitting by silently as the neighborhood dies,” said Masami Kobayashi, a professor of architecture at Meiji University here who has tried to persuade the city to accept less disruptive alternative road plans with no success. “In 10 years, we will regret having done this.”
