by | 26 January 2006 · 5:16 pm

Gaps in China’s Great Firewall

Mark Leonard, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, offers an optimistic perspective in today’s Telegraph on China’s attempt to censor its web content.

China is 60 times the size of Saudi Arabia, and most experts agree that the sheer volume of traffic would be impossible to police. But Beijing has risen to the challenge, throwing people, money and technology at the problem. The more lurid accounts talk of an e-police force of 100,000 people employed to scour the net, blocking sites and checking e-mails. The numbers are exaggerated, but analysts agree that teams of computer scientists run a firewall with at least four different kinds of filter.

Second, look at what the Chinese are censoring. Much of the commentary suggests that China is an iron-clad Stalinist state, shielded from global events by the “great firewall of China”.

But analogies with Russia and eastern Europe in the 1980s are misleading. The governments of the Soviet bloc looked on powerlessly as their grey world of propaganda was eclipsed by Technicolor images of a better life in the West.

But China is already part of the capitalist world. It is awash with information, products and all the baubles of the consumer society. With every year that passes, the number of people with access to these goodies grows.

What Google has been asked to censor are perennial political taboos: articles on Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square and Falun Gong – as well as pieces criticising the Communist Party’s rule. But this kind of censorship is relatively subtle, aimed not at shutting China off from the world, but zeroing in on political controversy. Google estimates that less than two per cent of internet searches will be affected.

The third lesson is the most profound. What worries China the most is not information coming in from outside. It is Chinese people talking to one another. China’s laws on the freedom of assembly are Draconian. Charities, trade unions and religious groups are kept under close surveillance and regularly banned. The ferocity with which the Communist Party suppresses the herbivorous and mild-mannered Falun Gong has puzzled many outside observers. But Beijing is not afraid of the content of their meetings; it is afraid of them meeting at all….

But however impressive the Chinese mastery of the internet has become, it is hard to see how the profusion of information circulating around China can fail to leave its mark on the country’s politics. The great firewall is already springing leaks….

Many Chinese are also taking refuge in the world of digital images, which can be sent between mobiles or e-mailed as attachments, escaping the filters of the censor. Finally, there is the ingenuity of the Chinese people, who often write to each other in coded language (using stories as allegories). This has led many cyber-pundits to predict that, although Google’s avant-garde credentials have been tarnished, the dream of a democratic China has not been deferred.

via Google News

Rebecca MacKinnon’s RConversation blog is among the best English-language sources about censorship and the Chinese blogosphere.

I wonder how many people incensed at Google’s compromises with the Chinese government are equally incensed about the myriad of much nastier compromises routinely tolerated by the multitude of NGOs, news reporters, and “peacekeepers” trying to make a small difference under conditions of far deadlier tyranny and chaos around the world.

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by | 25 January 2006 · 2:00 pm

Poland on the Brink of Final Partition, 1793

Evaluations of the state of affairs in Poland in the late eighteenth century have conflicted sharply. Up through the Second World War, German authors tended to regard the situation in Poland as dismal. They emphasized the dysfunctional nature of Poland’s political order and the stultification of its culture. In German circles, the phrase “Polish economy” (polnische Wirtschaft) long signaled a ludicrous oxymoron. Such assessments were used to justify, directly or indirectly, Prussia’s role in the partitioning of Poland. If it can be argued that Poland was a failing state, then Prussia emerges as its redeemer, introducing stability and the flowering of civilization to the territories it absorbed.

Polish authors usually offer different readings. While quick to admit the many problems besetting the country, they tend to emphasize the great strides made during the final decades of the eighteenth century. According to this view, Poland was solving its problems and evolving into a strong, progressive, constitutional monarchy. Its very success, in fact, led to its demise. Because reactionary, autocratic neighbors feared that Poland’s transformation could destabilize their own regimes, they crushed the experiment.

Both perspectives can draw comfort from the historical record. Certainly Poland, or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as it was known at the time, was burdened by enormous challenges, and the process of reform ignited bitter conflicts that threatened to rip the fabric of the state apart. At the same time, it made some impressive strides forward. In the twilight of its existence the commonwealth, long a study in torpor, displayed uncharacteristic vitality. Driven by the very real threat of dissolution, its leaders undertook bold measures. Its residents, suspended between despair and hope, persevered as best they could….

For all the noise of this tumultuous period, life in Poznan proceeded in large measure according to long-established patterns…. Its population was fragmented into dozens of insular communities with few occasions for generating an overarching sense of communitas across the urban area, let alone wider expanses. Regarding nationalism, the climate of late eighteenth-century Poznan was not conducive to such forms of identity. Its inhabitants continued to find meaning and their widest sense of social belonging within the confines of their locale, caste, and confession.

SOURCE: Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East-Central European City, by Robert E. Alvis (Syracuse U. Press, 2005), pp. 1-2

Hmm. I wonder why this sounds so familiar.

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by | 22 January 2006 · 8:09 pm

How Secular Was European Nationalism?

[Religion and the Rise of Nationalism] examines the relationship between religion and nationalism in Poznan from 1793 to 1848. Currently located in western Poland, Poznan long has ranked as one of the largest cities along the linguistic and cultural borderland that separates the German-speaking regions of Central Europe from the Polish-speaking regions to the east. Relations among the city’s ethnic populations were never exactly warm. They grew more strained over the first half of the nineteenth century, a period in which German and Polish Poznanians developed strong attachments to their respective national identities. I explore how religion influenced this process….

The modernist argument has dominated the study of nationalism for good reason: its adherents have marshaled an impressive body of evidence in its favor. In this study I have found many aspects of the modernist argument to be especially helpful in making sense of Poznan’s changing social order. Where I part company with many modernists is over the supposedly secular quality of early European nationalism. It is indeed true that many high-proflle nationalist leaders from this period were avowedly secular, and the fiercest opposition to their agendas often came from religious sources. One can cite the struggles between the Jacobins and the Catholic Church in France, or between Giuseppe Mazzini and the Papal See on the Italian peninsula. But nationalism mattered in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries because it resonated with large numbers of people and manifested itself repeatedly in mass movements of no small revolutionary potential. Yet Europe’s population of secular urban sophisticates remained rather limited; secularization was only beginning to take its toll on traditional religious practice. In other words, most of the Europeans who rallied behind early nationalist appeals still maintained their traditional religious affiliations.

This work develops a nuanced and variegated portrait of the relationship between early European nationalism and religion. While many early nationalists were in fact estranged from organized religion, it was not uncommon for adherents of this new ideology to remain faithful to their religious traditions and to draw from these traditions in articulating their nationalist visions. Religion and nationalism could peacefully coexist and fruitfully interact with one another on a number of levels, as I demonstrate through a detailed study of one fascinating case: the city of Poznan in the first half of the nineteenth century. During this time Poznan emerged as an important center of Polish and German nationalist ferment as residents explored their heritage and agitated for a new political order based upon their nationalist assumptions. These processes culminated in an uprising during the “Springtime of Nations” in 1848, a period of revolutionary enthusiasm across the continent that stands as a touchstone of early nationalism. In Poznan in the years leading up to and including 1848, calls for greater political enfranchisement and national self-determination routinely intersected with the symbols, offices, and concerns of organized religion….

In exploring the relationship between religion and early nationalism, this book also contributes to an understanding of the evolution of nationalism. To account for the developmental trajectory of nationalist movements, historians long have drawn binary distinctions between early nationalism and its later manifestations. In its early phase, commonly reckoned as extending well into the second half of the nineteenth century, nationalist movements typically were spearheaded by liberal bourgeois elites, whose political interests and values set the tone within such movements. Sometime around 1870, however, the tenor of nationalism started changing. Conservative political establishments across Europe, long opposed to the revolutionary principles associated with nationalism, adopted new strategies vis-a-vis the phenomenon. Rather than resisting nationalism, they co-opted it and made it serve their reactionary ends. In this later phase, the rhetoric of nationalism demonstrated a greater sympathy for premodern values and institutions. It tended toward chauvinism as well, highlighting the virtues of the nation by disparaging ethnic or religious outsiders such as Jews, minority groups, or foreign workers. Such tendencies tapped into the xenophobia of the masses, gready expanding the popular appeal of nationalism.

An influential example of this typology can be found in Eric J. Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1992). Hobsbawm describes the years from 1830 to 1880 as the “classical period of liberal nationalism,” when nationalism was viewed by both its supporters and detractors as a new and progressive force closely associated with the liberal ideology that had emerged during the era of the French Revolution. But in the decades following 1880, nationalism changed considerably. Most notably, it “mutated from a concept associated with liberalism and the left, into a chauvinist, imperialist and xenophobic movement of the right.” In his recent study of Polish nationalism, Brian Porter reiterates this same progression. Early Polish nationalism, he argues, was an inclusive movement focused on the emancipation of Poland and the rest of humanity from oppression of various forms. In the 1870s and 1880s, though, a much narrower conception of the nation emerged that was defined by a conscious hatred of outsiders. This animus was employed to promote the disciplined adherence to national values in the face of outside threats and to buttress established hierarchies of power. [Some have suggested that liberal internationalism is now mutating along the same lines in the face of threats to its established hierarchies of national and international power.–J.]

I do not deny the utility of generalizing about the differences between early and later forms of nationalism, especially when theorizing on a grand scale as Hobsbawm does. It is important, though, to consider counterpoints that remind us of the gap between the ideal type and historical reality. The actual development of specific nationalist movements routinely violated the explanatory models later developed to describe them. As my study demonstrates, the attempt by conservative establishments to commandeer nationalist movements was not strictly a late-nineteenth-century phenomenon. The Prussian regime and conservative nobles sought the same goal before 1848. Likewise, early nationalist leaders employed a rhetorical range that extended well beyond calls for equality, self-determination, and international solidarity. Events in Poznan make clear that Polish and German nationalists understood how the demonization of ethnic and religious outsiders could motivate core supporters….

I agree with the majority view that nationalism is a distinctly modern phenomenon whose origin is tied to political, cultural, and socioeconomic development unique to the modern era. And yet I dissent from the current vogue, inspired in particular by the postmodern approach of Benedict Anderson, of seeing national identities as raw inventions. Nationalisms have been capable of invoking intense passion in part because they lay reasonable claim to preexisting ethnic identities and historical and cultural legacies that are of genuine, compelling substance.

SOURCE: Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East-Central European City, by Robert E. Alvis (Syracuse U. Press, 2005), pp. xiii-xxi

See also Robert E. Alvis, “A Clash of Catholic Cultures on the German-Polish Border: The Tale of a Controversial Priest in Poznan, 1839-1842,” The Catholic Historical Review 88 (2002), pp. 470-488 (Project Muse subscription required)

UPDATE: Nathanael of Rhine River, who knows a thing or two about mixed identities, middle grounds, minority cultures, and the uses of nationalism and religion, comments:

I’ve never found the dichotomy of nationalism and religion convincing except in a few cases. A better way of looking at the problem is how nationalists ‘nationalize’ religion or religious issues, such as with the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Kulturkampf, or how pro-Church movements came to defend democratic rights (like the Catholic Liberals or Zentrum.)

I forgot to add a couple questions about the role of religion in contemporary European nationalism: Was Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla more a religious or a national leader? To what extent did he remain a Polish nationalist even after he became Catholic Pope John Paul II?

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by | 22 January 2006 · 6:42 pm

Secular Nationalism: Received Wisdom

Over the past several decades the idea that religion and nationalism can and do mix has been obvious to anyone who reads the newspaper. Around the world a series of powerful movements have sought to redefine societies and rework international boundaries in ways that emphasize the importance of religion within the political logic of nationalism and nation-states. Examples are abundant: the agenda of Hindu nationalists in India; the increasing centrality of Buddhism in the political discourse of the Sri Lankan government; the demands of “fundamentalist” Jewish groups that the Israeli government and society adhere strictly to Jewish law and the boundaries of the ancient Israelite kingdom; the powerful dovetailing of religious and ethnic identity that helped fuel the carnage in the former Yugoslavia; and drives across the Muslim world to bring governments into greater accord with the teachings of Islamic law. Such developments inspired the sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer to write a widely read study in which he argues that the encounter between older “secular” nationalisms and newer “religious” nationalisms has emerged as the most troubling source of conflict in our time. In its early incarnation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, he argues, nationalism was secular in nature, “based on the idea that the legitimacy of the state was rooted in the will of the people, divorced from any religious sanction.” The secular nationalist ideology became hegemonic in the West and eventually spread around the globe, particularly during the era of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. Religious nationalism, in which religious identity is integral to the concept of nation, is a more recent phenomenon, he asserts, typically developing in the non-Western world as a conscious reaction to the perceived failures of secular nationalism to deliver on its promise of modernization and prosperity.

In building his argument, Juergensmeyer draws upon the received wisdom of scholars engaged in the study of nationalism. Although evaluations of the subject are many and diverse, most scholars have articulated versions of the “modernist” argument. According to this argument, nationalism is a distinctly modern phenomenon, originating in Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, stimulated by the powerful forces that were transforming European society at that time…. While differing over primary causes, adherents of the modernist view tend to view nationalism–at least in its early phase–as indelibly linked to the liberal values associated with the modern era. Premodern European society was rigidly hierarchical, and its highest echelons claimed as their birthright a preponderant share of wealth and political influence. Nationalism represented a new and more egalitarian understanding of community. Its proponents championed the view that national heritage trumped all other forms of social identity. The status of one’s parents, be they noble, bourgeois, or peasant, paled in comparison to one’s nationality, and the boundaries of nation included all who exhibited its telltale characteristics. Nationalism thus served as a powerful tool for challenging the privileges of the elite establishment and pushing for more democratic forms of government. Summing up the predominant view of early nationalism, Anthony D. Smith writes: “At the outset, nationalism was an inclusive and liberating force. It broke down the various localisms of region, dialect, custom and clan, and helped to create large and powerful nation-states, with centralized markets and systems of administration, taxation and education. Its appeal was popular and democratic. It attacked feudal practices and oppressive imperial tyrannies and proclaimed the sovereignty of the people and the right of all peoples to determine their own destinies.”

A great many scholars also include secularism among the modern values associated with early European nationalism. Under the ancien regime, the argument often runs, Europe’s ruling dynasties allied themselves with the dominant church or churches of their realms in order to enhance their power. The churches were granted numerous privileges, and in exchange church officials encouraged followers to believe that the political elite ruled according to God’s all-wise design. In their struggle against the social and political order of the ancien regime, early nationalists also took on organized religion, dismissing its political theology as so much superstition, unsuited for the progressive new era that was thought to be unfolding. Scholars often have portrayed early nationalists as secular-minded urban sophisticates, disenchanted with the religious worldview with which they had been raised….

At the same time scholars have sought to explain the striking affinities between early nationalist practices and traditional religious piety. The sacred aura surrounding nationalist symbols and their capacity to evoke devotion and self-sacrifice from adherents have led many observers to identify nationalism as a kind of ersatz religion…. According to this view, the typical early nationalist may have been estranged from traditional religion, but he or she still experienced spiritual needs long associated with religion, such as a sense of moral purpose and a comprehensive worldview. Nationalism helped fill the void created by the loss of traditional religious faith.

SOURCE: Religion and the Rise of Nationalism: A Profile of an East-Central European City, by Robert E. Alvis (Syracuse U. Press, 2005), pp. xiii-xvi

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by | 22 January 2006 · 5:57 pm

Australia’s Crickety Baseball

Today cricket is stronger than ever, yet baseball has made its own respectable path since switching to summer play in the 1970s. Despite Australia’s small population it is clear that there is room for both sports….

Baseball will never replace cricket in Australia, but the sport has a loyal and respectable following that cannot be ignored. The late Roy Page, South Australian night baseball pioneer, explained why he eventually preferred baseball over cricket: “[In baseball] at least you’d see a game decided. You’d go to cricket and you’d go for five days–which I used to do. You’d go five days, one after the other and at the end of the fifth day, it’s a draw! An inglorious draw!”…

Still, ignorance of the game in Australia is hard to overcome. While zealous early entrepreneurs of baseball in Australia took great pains to explain the rules at every opportunity, the majority of the population never had the chance to learn because they never attended or played in a game. Accordingly, when Australians start to play the game, they usually bring a cricket style with them, such as throwing the ball underarm to other fielders and swinging at pitches near the ground. Many see this as a major hurdle that will continue to plague Australian baseball in the future.

Lismore Baseball Club founder Reg Baxter, though a stalwart cricket player as well, had nothing but praise for the attributes of baseball: “It lasts only two hours, while cricket is over two weeks, so you’re tied down for two weeks, whereas in baseball you can say you’re not available next Saturday and somebody else can take your place. To me there’s something in baseball that’s not in any other sport. I believe baseball is the greatest thinking game there is.” Roy Page even credited baseball for helping bring innovations to cricket: “One-day cricket-who started that up? Ian Chappell. A cricket-baseballer. It was his idea that people wanted to see something on that specific day. They didn’t want to go two and three days…. They wanted to see something settled on the night…. This was Chappell’s idea. And I think that’s going to be more pronounced in the years to come, I really do. One-day cricket. More so than this five-day business. It’s not good enough.” Australian team cricketers consulted Dave Nilsson and the Institute of Sport for batting and throwing tips. Baseball fans listen to cricket on radios at the IBLA [International Baseball League of Australia] games [emphasis added]. Cricketers still play winter baseball to keep in shape for the summer. Many Australian baseballers still field and bat like cricketers. Cricket or baseball? In Australia you can comfortably play and support either or both.

SOURCE: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, by Joe Clark (U. Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 136-137

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by | 21 January 2006 · 4:51 pm

How Baseball Came to Darwin, NT

Like the other states, the Northern Territory had played baseball informally for many years before joining the national competition. Japanese fisherman and, later, American servicemen were first to play the game there. Organized baseball in the Northern Territory started in 1953 through the efforts of Charles Se Kee, a leading citizen of the Darwin Chinese community and president of the Darwin Basketball Association. Northern Territory baseball was limited to far-flung Darwin, Alice Springs, Katherine, and Tennant Creek….

Darwin baseball began humbly with a competition among four teams. Equipment was expensive and difficult to obtain. While there were enough teams for a decent competition, lack of adequate facilities was a major problem. One player remembers: “We didn’t have any baseball diamonds. We had the old Darwin Oval, used as an area for public functions. In those days there was no grass on the field, and it was just dirt and rock. We had to paint the lines. We didn’t have lime in those days. It didn’t matter because there was no grass. We played on the oval with a cliff behind us, and any foul balls would probably go off into the sea. The games were held up while we got kids to go down and try to find the ball.” From its beginning baseball in Darwin was played at the wrong time of year, during the wet season from 1 October to the end of March. Darwin Baseball League tried a supplementary dry season competition in 1956, playing at Coonawarra Oval with moderate success. Subsequent supplementary dry season play was attempted in 1964-68 but was dropped in favor of wet season competition, which players supported [probably so they could keep playing cricket during the dry season–J.]. As baseball became more competitive, though, Darwin changed permanently to dry season baseball in 1984.

SOURCE: A History of Australian Baseball: Time and Game, by Joe Clark (U. Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 78-79

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by | 21 January 2006 · 7:53 am

The Fun Side of Being Korean in Japan

On 14 January, Asahi Shimbun profiled a wildly successful, independent-minded, Japan-resident Korean, Kwak Choong Yang.

When entrepreneur Kwak Choong Yang was growing up in Japan, it is unlikely he could ever have imagined what would be happening here today. Though just a dozen or so years ago, many Japanese had negative perceptions of Korea, now they can’t seem to get enough of all things Korean, and interest in the country’s culture has never been stronger.

“True, some zainichi (Korean residents in Japan) are offended by all this. But we should welcome the fact that there is so much interest in our cultural roots,” says Kwak, a second-generation Korean resident in Japan. The 49-year-old set up a publishing business eight years ago and has been introducing Korean culture to Japan….

It was before World War II that Kwak’s father, aged 7 and all alone, arrived in Japan, where a relative lived. He worked his way up from the mines to management consultancy, the field in which he built a fortune.

Although the young Kwak grew up in comfort in Osaka, discrimination weighed heavily upon him. He was shocked when he secretly read about the “nationality clause” at the junior high school library. He realized there were restrictions on the jobs zainichi could hold in public service. He is still haunted by the memory of running out of a high school classroom after he announced his real name instead of his common name in Japanese. Kwak is therefore respectful of fellow zainichi who are grappling with discrimination.

“Even so, I want to tell people it’s fun being a zainichi,” he says. “Denial won’t achieve anything. We shouldn’t fear the changes surrounding the zainichi community.”…

Kwak takes a liberal approach not only to the gender of his staff, but also to his employees’ academic backgrounds.

He has hired high school graduates, and his company has no age-based retirement policy.

“I see myself as a dropout,” he says. “I feel afraid of clean-cut companies where 5,000 people wearing the same suits work. So it was really no use creating a similar, stifling organization. My employees don’t call me ‘president’ anyway.”

via Japundit

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by | 21 January 2006 · 7:19 am

Big Upsets in Sumo’s Starting Basho

This year’s first grand sumo tournament started off with the Georgian rank-and-filer Kokkai (‘Black Sea’) playing giantkiller, downing first grand champion Asashoryu, then newly promoted champion Kotooshu. Kokkai doesn’t have much to show for it by now, but he did help clear the way for others to rise to the top.

Here’s the Japan Times report after Day 13.

Tochiazuma dismantled Bulgarian fellow ozeki Kotooshu to take sole possession of the lead at 12-1 on Friday while Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu was slammed to a third defeat by countryman Ama with two days remaining at the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament.

With Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko looking on from the upper-level box seats, Tochiazuma never gave the ozeki debutant a chance to launch an attack as he steamrolled ahead and shoved his opponent over the edge with a salvo of slaps to the chest in the day’s penultimate bout at Tokyo’s Ryogoku Kokugikan.

Tochiazuma, who came out this basho facing demotion, moved a step closer to capturing his third career title with sekiwake Hakuho and rank-and-filers Tokutsuumi and Hokutoriki trailing one off the pace at 11-2.

Asashoryu, who lost to Hakuho a day earlier, was tossed down like a rag doll immediately after the faceoff with an overarm throw, leaving him with a 10-3 mark along with Kotooshu and slim hopes of winning his eighth straight title with after claiming all six Emperor’s Cups in 2005.

The yokozuna lost just six bouts in 2005 but has already suffered three defeats to start of the New Year.

Eleventh-ranked maegashira Hokutoriki (11-2) faced off in a rumble with Mongolian Hakuho but immediately backpedaled over the edge, slipping out of a share the lead.

UPDATE, Day 14: Tokyo native Tochiazuma remains in sole possession of the lead at 13-1, with Mongolian sekiwake Hakuho close behind at 12-2.

UPDATE, Day 15: Tochiazuma not only finished with the best record, 14-1, he also defeated mighty Asashoryu on the final day, handing the grand champion his 4th loss of this tournament. (Asashoryu lost only 6 bouts during the six tournaments of 2005.)

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by | 17 January 2006 · 9:37 pm

Protests in Zhongshan City, Guangdong

EastSouthWestNorth has pulled together over a dozen different accounts from both English and Chinese sources for a long blogpost headlined The Zhongshan Incident. This hits close to home for the Outliers, who spent a year teaching English at a locally sponsored startup Sun Wen College in the town of Shiqi in 1987-88. (Sun Wen is yet another name for Sun Zhongshan, better known abroad as Sun Yat-sen.)

At that time, it was a pleasant enough little town where nearly everything was under construction. The new road south to Zhuhai put the Macao border within about an hour’s drive, but the road north to Guangzhou took around three hours in a muddy, slow-moving, perpetual traffic jam.

Here’s a chunk of reporter Howard French’s account in the New York Times on 16 January.

SHANGHAI, Jan. 16 – A week of protests by villagers in China’s southern industrial heartland exploded into violence over the weekend with thousands of police officers brandishing automatic weapons and using electric batons to put down the rally, residents of the village said today.

As many as 60 people were injured, residents of Panlong village said, and at least one person, a 13-year-old girl, had been killed by security forces, they said. The police denied any responsibility, saying that the girl had died of a heart attack.

Residents of Panlong, about an hour’s drive from the capital of Guangdong Province, said the police had chased and beaten protesters and bystanders alike, and that locals had retaliated by smashing police cars and mounting hit-and-run attacks, throwing rocks at security forces.

The clash with villagers in Panlong marked the second time in a month that large numbers of Chinese security forces, including paramilitary troops, were deployed to put down a local demonstration.

The protests coincided with a visit to the area by the North Korean president, Kim Il Jong. The secretive Korean leader’s visit, though never publicly confirmed by Beijing, is a poorly kept secret, and some residents said his presence in the region over the weekend may have contributed to the nervousness of the security forces. Like thousands of other demonstrations roiling rural China, it involved land use and environmental issues….

Indeed, demonstrating residents of Panlong village said their anger had been sparked by a government land acquisition program they had been led to believe in 2003 was part of a construction project to build a superhighway connecting the nearby city of Zhuhai with Beijing. Later, the villagers learned the land was being re-sold to developers to set up special chemical and garment industrial zones in the area.

The region that immediately surrounds Panlong village is among the most heavily industrialized land anywhere, and was the laboratory and launching pad for the economic changes put in place by Deng Xiaoping. These revolutionary changes revived the country and turned it, in the space of a generation, into a global economic powerhouse.

Panlong village is a short drive from Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhuhai – all large and booming cities virtually created from scratch. It is also close to Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and to Hong Kong, whose investments helped fuel the area’s takeoff. The region is not only the scene of some of China’s fastest growing industries, including high-tech manufacturing, textiles and furniture – much of which is exported to the United States – it is also the scene of some of the country’s worst pollution.

For most of the year visibility over the scrubland plains is so poor that beyond a few hundred yards all detail is lost behind a thick gray curtain of eye-stinging haze. Water supplies in the area are equally imperiled by the pollution. The situation has become so bad that even residents of Hong Kong, whose economy is dependent upon the adjacent region’s growth, rue the environmental monster they have helped create.

Increasingly, their ambivalence is shared by rural dwellers in the area, some of the first people to benefit from the opening up of the country to foreign and private investment, which began in special economic zones in nearby areas in Guangdong as part of China’s sweeping economic reforms.

“We have many special zones in this area, and each of them attracts investment,” said a villager who was interviewed by telephone and gave his name as Hou. “The economic deals set in the past were not favorable, and many zones here have had smaller protests before, but the people were not united.”

“Now,” he added, “there are uprisings everywhere.”

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by | 17 January 2006 · 6:01 pm

Lee-Jackson-King Day?

Wow. Here‘s a bit of awkward Virginia trivia I wasn’t aware of: “Lee-Jackson-King Day was a holiday celebrated in the Commonwealth of Virginia from 1984 to 2000.” Ah, the things you miss by being a long-gone expat!

via Tyler Cowen on Marginal Revolution

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