Chen Guangcheng, entering a Beijing Hospital with US Ambassaor Gary Locke and State Dep't Legal Advisor Harold Koh

More often than not, I am my friends’ go-to China person; something in the news pops up with China, I get the questions.  So I wasn’t surprised on Saturday when over some carrot cake at the Chelsea Market a friend of mine had questions about Chen Guangcheng: if he cared so much about human rights in China, why would he leave?  What is up with the Chinese government, keeping a blind man trapped in his own home?  How did things get so messy between the U.S. government and Chen?

It’s been almost a month since Chen fled the home that illegally became his prison. So what exactly is up with Chen’s escape and to answer some questions – what does it all mean?

Chen’s Escape Has Propelled Human Rights to the Top of the US-China Agenda

My friend’s question on Saturday caught me off guard – does Chen really care about human rights in China if he fled to the protection of the U.S. Embassy, ostensibly to seek asylum and leave China.

To ask a man with a wife and two children to be a martyr for his cause is asking too much.  As this blog has recounted previously, since Chen’s release from prison (oddly convicted of a traffic disturbance) did not result in freedom.  Instead, for the past year and a half, Chen and his family have been subjected to illegal house arrest and at times, physical torture by his captures.

It is true that by departing China, Chen’s ability to change China’s current system will be much reduced if not extinguished.  But his heroic flight has perhaps done more to highlight the Chinese government’s recent illegal oppression of dissent than anything else.  Over the past year and a half, this blog has increasingly written about the Chinese government’s crackdown on China’s nascent rights defending (weiquan) lawyers. Aside from people already interested in the issues, these posts – and the acts of repression which they have focused on – have received little attention.

Chen’s escape and his subsequent stay at the U.S. Embassy  altered this focus. With Hillary Clinton arriving for the Strategic and Economic

Inspiring Architecture? The US Embassy in Beijing

Dialogue (S&ED), the focus of U.S.-China relations shifted to human rights.  For one week, as the world watched, the U.S. and China’s relationship was thrown back to a 1980s-Cold War paradigm, when ideology played a more governing role.  For one week, the Western media’s attention finally focused on the repression of rights defending lawyers, and the lip service the Chinese government gives “rule of law” when it comes to civil rights and civil liberties.

It is amazing that a single man’s act, that one blind man’s heroic act, can still change the dialogue in U.S.-China relations.  It is a hopeful reminder that in this globalized world, individuals still matter; that one man’s quest for freedom is still “news.”  And don’t think Chen’s act was not a heroic one.  Not only was a blind man able to find his way to Beijing, but imagine if he wasn’t; imagine if he was caught.  Likely his fate would match that of Gao Zhisheng, a rights defending lawyer who, while in government custody, remains missing.

The U.S. Government’s Actions Supported Human Rights

Some have criticized the U.S. government – or more aptly, the Obama Administration – for its dealings with the Chinese government over Chen.  Initially, the U.S. Embassy worked out a deal with the Chinese government whereby Chen would stay in China, study law at a university in a coastal city away from the thugs of his hometown, and be left alone with his family.  This was what Chen initially wanted.

But once he left the safety of the embassy for a Beijing hospital, Chen began to reconsider his options.  As Prof. Jerome A. Cohen recounted to CNN, the promised U.S. Embassy official was unable to stay with Chen at the hospital and once he began speaking other rights defending lawyers – friends he hadn’t been able to speak to for a year – he began to more clearly understand the increased oppression of rights defending lawyers in China.  Chen was scared; Chen realized that without full information, he misjudged the situation.  That’s when he vocally requested that he be able to leave China for the United States.

Were some in the U.S. Embassy a touch too naive to rely on the Chinese government’s promises?  Most likely.  But being naive is not the same as turning one’s back to human rights.  It was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to allow Chen into the U.S. Embassy in the first place.  Chinese citizens cannot just willy-nilly enter the U.S. Embassy; even American citizens are allowed limited access to their embassy (which resembles a high-security prison).  As the N.Y. Times has recounted, embassy officials were notified of Chen’s flight to Beijing and on April 25, Secretary Clinton gave the authorization to sneak Chen into the embassy compound.  Secretary Clinton knew full well that by providing that approval, a throw-down with the Chinese government on the issue of human rights was certain and the ultimate outcome unclear. It is unfortunate – although not all together shocking given the current acrimonious status of politics – that Washington D.C. cannot view this moment as a proud one for America and its ideals; that the web of support that both parties have built for a human rights network in China over the years enabled Chen to come to our door.   Instead, it appears that what could otherwise be a proud moment for Americans, is becoming a political tug-of-war.

Who is Driving the Bus? The Chinese Central Government’s Lack of Control

Beep Beep! Who drives this bus??

What is perhaps the most shocking of all from this whole situation is the Chinese central government’s lack of control of local governments. Chen’s persecution has largely been conducted by the local government in his hometown, with local government officials still seething after his attempt to bring a lawsuit against them for forced abortions.  But even when Chen fled to Beijing, his safety could not be guaranteed, hence his changed desire to leave for the United States.  Many of his relatives left in their villages are being persecuted by local officials.  It makes one wonder – who really drives the bus in China?

Imagine a United States where Governor George Wallace could ignore federal law, have his way and continue segregation in his home state of Alabama.  Likely you can’t.  It’s unfathomable to think that a national government is unable to enforce its own laws, and in the case of China, that a supposed authoritarian dictatorship cannot control lower level party members.

Chen’s case reflects a center weaker than anyone previously thought.  And that is what is most frightening and should give people pause.  Does China really have the power to become a rising superpower or will it revert to its warlord past, where each city is governed by its own power broker and the central government remains impotent?

While China’s weakness appears to manifest itself often in human rights issues, it should not be just a concern for human rights advocates.  Anyone working in or with China – business people, government officials – should be troubled.  A weak center, especially as China undergoes an important leadership transition this year, does not bode well for China.

Prof. Jerome Cohen – The Fixer

On a final note, I want to focus on Prof. Jerome Cohen and his role in all of this.  As a research fellow for two years, I had the privilege of working

Prof. Jerome A. Cohen

with Prof. Cohen at NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute.  In that time, I got to know a kind, brilliant man who never ceased to amaze me.  It was Prof. Cohen who first identified the ingenuity and necessity of Chen’s unschooled, “barefoot lawyer” approach in 2003 and deservedly catapulted him to the world stage.

While my two years with Prof. Cohen were filled with inspiring moments, I have never been more proud of him than I was with his handling of the Chen Guangcheng situation.  While this is all purely based on hearsay, it appears that it was Prof.  Cohen who got the U.S. and China out of what was becoming a crisis situation.  Prof. Cohen’s lifetime of experience with China, including high-level delegations soon after Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, allowed him to realize that all that was needed was a practical solution where everyone could save face: a scholarship for Chen to study law at NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and invitation for his wife and children to join him.

Now we wait and see.  The United States has approved Chen’s visa application and just yesterday he applied for his Chinese passport.  Although the Chinese government could renege on the deal, that looks increasingly less likely and ultimately not in their best interest.  It’s never a satisfying moment when one of your citizens essentially seeks protection from a foreign government for human rights abuses, but on some level, the Chinese government is likely happy that Chen, who has long been a rabble rouser and a cause célèbre for other Chinese rights defenders and foreign friends, is leaving the country.  Unfortunately for Chen and his family, he will likely never be able to return to his home country.

For Immediate Release                                                                                       May 4, 2012

2012/707

STATEMENT BY VICTORIA NULAND, SPOKESPRSON

Chen Guangcheng

The Chinese Government stated today that Mr. Chen Guangcheng has the same right to travel abroad as any other citizen of China. Mr. Chen has been offered a fellowship from an American university, where he can be accompanied by his wife and two children.

The Chinese Government has indicated that it will accept Mr. Chen’s applications for appropriate travel documents.  The United States Government expects that the Chinese Government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents and make accommodations for his current medical condition.  The United States Government would then give visa requests for him and his immediate family priority attention.

This matter has been handled in the spirit of a cooperative U.S.-China partnership.

# # #

Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing

In 2008, Yardley, a former Beijing-based reporter for the New York Times and a basketball fanatic, followed China’s worst basketball team, Shanxi’s Brave Dragons, its crazy owner, Boss Wang, and its great experiment: hiring a former NBA head coach, Bob Weiss. While the Brave Dragons may be China’s worst team, they are its most lovable.  Through multiple interviews, observations and traveling with the team, Yardley perfectly captures the comedy that at times is the Brave Dragons and demonstrates the individual humanity of the team’s players, coaches and even in the end, of Boss Wang.

But if all Yardley’s book did was provide the Chinese basketball version of the The Bad News Bears, it wouldn’t be worthy of the four stars this review has given it.  Yardley uses the CBA and basketball in China to better describe the complexity that is U.S.-China relations.  The subtitle of the book refers to this as a “cultural clash” but as Yardley’s story makes clear, that is a misnomer (and likely the result of an overzealous editor).  Instead of the usual take that relations are strained, Yardley portrays the complicated dance – where some times foots are stepped on and shins

Former NBA head Coach and Brave Dragon coach Bob Weiss

kicked – that occurs on a daily basis between the Chinese and American basketball players, their competing leagues, and their cultures.

In the process, Yardley calls into question some of the more common-held myths about China.

Myth Busting #1: China’s State Capitalism is Not All that Great

Since the economic downturn in 2008 and the ever increasing ineffectiveness of Congress, there seems to be a growing consensus that China’s “state capitalism” is superior to America’s democratic one (think Tom Friedman’s That Used to Be Us and Ian Bremmer’s The End of the Free Market).

In Brave Dragons, Yardley challenges this increasingly common perception by analyzing the hot mess that is the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). The CBA is anything but a competitive league.  The CBA’s goal is not to make money or even to provide China’s sizable basketball fan base with a satisfying experience, or even to develop talent.  Instead talent is largely stunted, the league is not terribly competitive and even a team like the Shanghai Sharks doesn’t take in much of a profit, or more aptly, doesn’t care to.

Perhaps what is most shocking is the archaic way in which basketball talent is still found in China.  China doesn’t really do little league and youth sports, where any young kid with a love of the game can play, regardless of his or her ability, and where those with enough passion for the sport and enough talent may eventually make that sport his or her career.  Instead, through a series of bone measurements and medical tests, Chinese doctors determine which youngsters are destined to grow tall and then enroll them into the country’s sport system, providing them with little choice concerning their future career.

As Yardley points out, this system is not without its detractors but their criticism gains little traction.  In 2004, then CBA president, Li Yuanwei commissioned a consulting service to create a plan for the CBA to become a successful, efficient and effective organization.  But effective and efficient without pushing many of the government bureaucrats and Party officials who make their living from the system as it stands is nearly impossible.  The plan was shelved, with the excuse that China was just not ready.

Practice makes perfect? Practice is non-stop in China

Yardley’s description of the CBA reflects the shackles of the communist system and the vested interest that propel some aspects of the anachronistic system to continue to function.   But one begins to wonder – to what extent is this just limited to basketball?  How many other industries in China function so disastrously?  Yardley never fully tells us that as it is outside the scope of the book, but his book certainly raises the question and leaves the reader thinking: if that is how basketball is run in China, I’ll take the U.S. any day of the week, even in this economic downturn.

Myth Busting #2:  China is Never Going to Look Just Like Us, So Maybe We Should Stop Trying

Yardley perfectly demonstrates the arrogance of the NBA’s current business tactics in China by comparing it to the YMCA’s strategy. In 1895, the YMCA first brought basketball to China in an effort ostensibly to assist China during a historical transition (the impending fall of the Qing dynasty) but with the covert goal to convert as many Chinese to Christianity as possible.

In the process of attempting to achieve its goal, the YMCA became a solidly Chinese organization.  It was that sinicization of the organization that ultimately saved it.  Today, the organization still exists in China although Christianity is no longer a part of its mission.  But it continues to teach the importance of sports and basketball.

The CBA’s current ineptitude is readily apparent to the NBA as it sits on the sidelines, salivating and waiting to not just break into the Chinese basketball market but to control it.  Basketball is s the hottest sport in China and the NBA wants to be able to tap a country of 1.3 billion fans. But the NBA’s plan for China is less of a partnership and more of a colonization of the game by eradicating the current structure.  Although the NBA has hired consultants to analyze its takeover, its analysis left out one important question – did the Chinese want this?  As Yardley points out, if the NBA is genuine about promoting basketball and not just its own profit, it needs to take a lesson from the YMCA – to have long-term success it is essential that there is some sort of Chinese buy-in; that it cannot just be a complete takeover.

Yardley’s analysis made me think of my own work in China – rule of law development.  The United States government provides millions of dollars in grants a year to U.S. universities and organizations to promote greater rule of law in China.  But sometimes these “exchanges” become more a didactic, one-sided explanation of how the Chinese legal system should look more like ours.  But what good are these exchanges if there is no Chinese buy-in?  It’s good that these exchanges are out there, but what should their roles be?  There is no denying that China needs a greater rule of law and its own people clamor for it, but how do we copy the YMCA model to guarantee that rule of law maintains its existence?

Myth Busting #3:  It’s Ordinary People that Will Determine US-China Relations

The most humorous aspects of Brave Dragons were parts about the American players’ response to the often unique, Chinese ways of basketball.

Bonzi Wells practicing with a Chinese teammate

Every team in China is allowed two foreign players (except Bayi, the Army’s team) and as a result, many aging NBA stars spend a lot of time playing in China.  How do the American players – and Coach Weiss – respond to what appears to be off the wall demands from the Chinese coaches?  How do the Chinese fans respond to a former NBA star and bad boy like Bonzi Wells when he starts playing for the Brave Dragons?  When two cultures collide, what are the results?  According to Yardley, it’s not all that bad and not just changes the relations, but changes people as well.

Yardley’s book is a reminder that US-China relations is not always a government-to-government affair.  Rather individuals play a very important role in how the two cultures end up understanding each other, and ultimately forgiving each other for their respective cultural faux pas.  These individuals will not necessarily be people who understand anything of the other person’s culture; these are just regular Joes who end up in China – they didn’t necessarily ask for it, sought it out, or ever even thought about China, but that is where their life took them.  And the people they interact with don’t necessarily speak English, understand that much about American culture, or even wanted to work with Americans, but that is where fate placed them.

And as everything in life becomes more globalized, more and more non-specialists will be interacting with China.  Yardley shows that while at times there will be friction, ultimately these interactions are essential – if not the most important – to our understanding of each other.

In sum, Jim Yardley does an amazing job of showing the compassion and humanity of each player on the Brave Dragons, even Bonzi Wells you end up liking and understanding (to a degree).  But more importantly – and the reason why Brave Dragons is a must read for anyone who has any dealings with China – Yardley convinces the reader not just of the economic bond between China and the US, but the emotional one.  And it’s important in today’s world to be reminded of the bond that exists between people.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing, by Jim Yardley (Alfred A. Knoff 2012), 300 pages.

Another question that is being raised with more frequency is: as China becomes a more equal player on the world stage, how will its views of human rights impact the development of international human rights laws and the role of the United Nations.

On Friday, April 13, RightsLink, a human rights law research organization based out of Columbia Law School, will host a forum examining exactly the issue of China’s influence on international human rights discourse.  It is likely inevitable that China will begin to have a louder voice on the human rights world stage, but is that destined to be a bad thing?  Find out on Friday at what will likely prove to be a thought-provoking discussion.

Rightslink Henkin Forum: Rise of China and Its Influence on Human Rights

Friday, April 13^th, 2012
1:30 – 4:30 (2 Panel Discussions – see below)
Columbia Law School
Room 103, Jerome Greene Hall
435 W 116th Street
Box Lunches will be Served

Schedule
1:30 – 2:45 pm   China, the UN, and  Influence on International Human Rights

  Moderator: Professor Ben Liebman - Robert L. Lieff Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies, Columbia Law School
Panelists:
  Thomas Kellogg – Program Director, Open Society Institute; Adjunct Professor, Fordham Law School
  Steven Hill – Counselor for Legal Affairs, United States Mission to the United Nations
  Eva Pils – Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Chinese University of Hong Kong
 
3:00 – 4:30 pm China’s Relationship with Africa and its Impact on Human Rights 
  Moderator: TBA
Panelists:
  Matt Wells – Researcher, Africa Division, Human Rights Watch
Sarah Cook – Senior Research Analyst, East Asia, Freedom House

I Pledge Allegiance....

In its ongoing efforts to tie the Chinese legal profession as tight as possible to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ), the government agency that oversees the legal profession, announced its new initiative on Wednesday: every new lawyer in China must pledge allegiance to the CCP.

Lawyers’ oaths are not unique to China: almost every state in the United States requires newly-admitted attorneys to recite an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the state.  And this is not the first time that a lawyers’ oath has been required in China.  In 2000, the All China Lawyer’s Association (ACLA), the national bar association that all lawyers must be members of, first instituted an oath of office for all lawyers.  But in a Wednesday Legal Daily interview with an unnamed MOJ official, the MOJ determined that the ACLA oath was too general and ineffective.  As a result, the MOJ issued a new oath that must be sworn to in a formal ceremony (translation courtesy of Siweiluozi Blog):

“I volunteer to become a practicing lawyer of the People’s Republic of China and promise to faithfully perform the sacred duties of a socialist-with-Chinese-characteristics legal worker (中国特色社会主义法律工作者); to be faithful to the motherland and the people; to uphold the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system; to safeguard the dignity of the constitution and the law; to practice on behalf of the people; to be diligent, professional honest, and corruption-free; to protect the legitimate rights and interests of clients, the correct implementation of the law, and social fairness and justice; and diligently strive for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics!”

Compare this with the New York State oath taken by newly-admitted lawyers:

“I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the New York Constitution, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of attorney and counselor at law of the Supreme Court of the state of New York according to the best of my ability.”

There are aspects of the Chinese oath that are laudable: to be professionally honest, to be corruption-free, to serve the people, and to properly implement the law.  All of these requirements are ostensibly value-neutral and are good for the profession.  But what is decidedly different between the New York oath and the China one is that allegiance to the CCP is required.  According to the MOJ official, this was intentional.  One of the major reasons that the MOJ issued the new oath was to increase the quality of lawyers’ political thought as well as their professionalism.

That alone would not necessarily be problematic in a country where the Party is the State and let’s face it, people take oaths all the time and rarely listen to or abide by their words.  But this new oath comes in the midst of a major crackdown on China’s public interest lawyers and presumably will be used as a warning signal to this portion of the profession.

The CCP’s Increased Use of Socialist Rhetoric to Police Lawyers

Last fall, I published a law review article discussing the use of increased socialist rhetoric to step up the CCP’s control of China’s growing public

The Three Supremes

interest lawyers (China’s Rule of Law Mirage: The Regression of the Legal Profession Since the Adoption of the 2007 Lawyers Law).  The beefed-up socialist rhetoric began quietly with a speech given by President Hu Jintao at a Chinese Communist Party conference in December 2007.  In his speech, Hu announced the doctrine of “the Three Supremes:” “always regard as supreme the Party’s cause, the people’s interest, and the Constitution and laws.”

Although initially unclear if the Three Supremes were listed in hierarchical order and if the doctrine was even applicable to lawyers, Justice Minister Wu Aiying addressed the issue in August 2009.  Calling upon lawyers to “above all obey the Communist Party and help foster a harmonious society”(emphasis added),Wu stressed the need for lawyers to “pay attention to politics, take into consideration the big picture, and observe proper discipline.” Absent is any mention of “law” or the need to develop the institutions—such as an independent judiciary or a competent legal profession—integral to a rule of law society.

Further confirmation of this shift in rhetoric is found in the October 2008 MOJ pronouncement opening the new government-sponsored campaign of lawyers as “Chinese-style socialist legal professionals.”  In 2010, the MOJ went further with its rhetoric by directly stating the need for greater Party leadership of the legal profession.  In an interview with an unnamed MOJ official, the Legal Daily reported the forthcoming pronouncement of MOJ “Opinion Regarding the Further Strengthening and Improvement of Lawyers’ Work.” Like prior pronouncements, the 2010 MOJ Opinion contains flowery language detailing the need for lawyers to “always hold high the banner of socialism” and to “strengthen [their] political thought.”  But unlike previous statements, the 2010 MOJ Opinion candidly states the role that the Party will play in leading the legal profession.

Through the Party and the MOJ, the 2010 MOJ Opinion states the need for daily supervision and management of the profession, the need for standardization in how cases are handled, and the need to consider “political quality,” “professional quality,” and “ethical quality” in the yearly license renewal procedures

The CCP Re-institutes Party Cells

Party Cells in Law Firms....How Retro!

Finally, the CCP – as reported in a Legal Daily article – has successfully infiltrated most law firms, instituting Party cells in a throwback to the Cultural Revolution days when loyal party members set up “cells” within each work unit to guarantee the proper political ideology of the workers and to report any infractions in thought to the local Party.  While the 1980s saw a decline in Party cells, a 1995 Party Opinion called for the creation of more Party organizations within law firms.   In 2002, President Hu Jintao stressed that the legal profession could only become strong through Party leadership.  But in general, such efforts were met with strong resistance from the profession and law firms largely ignored the directives. However, all of that changed in 2008.

In March 2008, the CCP’s Organization Department and the MOJ’s corresponding Party organization issued a joint opinion announcing the need to improve and strengthen the Party apparatus in the legal profession. As if to indicate to the legal profession that this time the Party was serious about a greater Party presence in law firm life, Justice Minister Wu Aiying declared in July 2008 that more Party cells needed to be created within law firms as a way to better indoctrinate the profession.  This effort has largely succeeded.  Between April 2008 and April 2009, the number of Party cells found in law firms more than doubled.  Today, over 90 percent of all law firms in China maintain a Party cell.(all information can be found in the Legal Daily article).

The Oath Fits the Pattern of Greater CCP Control Over the Legal Profession

In 2007, China amended its Law on Lawyers, ostensibly to give greater independence to the profession.  As my article China’s Rule of Law Mirage points out, on paper, the amendments did in fact give the profession greater control and reduced the supervision of the MOJ.  However, as the article goes on to demonstrate, as public interest lawyers have had more success in their cases, the CCP has exerted greater control of the profession, undermining whatever promises of greater professional independence that is found in the 2007 Law on Lawyers.

Ironically, and as if to give the new oath requirement some sort of semblance of legality, the unnamed MOJ official in Wednesday’s Legal Daily interview attempts to argue that the new oath requirement is in-line with the edicts of the 2007’s amended Law on Lawyers.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Compared to recent CCP pronouncements, the 2007 Law on Layers is largely devoid of Party allegiance.  Article 1 does require a commitment to a “building of a socialist legal system” but that is sort of like requiring U.S. lawyers to assist in building a democratic legal system.  Additionally, the new structure of law firms and the establishment of solo practitioners were both perceived as an effort of MOJ to relinquish some of its supervisory role in exchange for greater supervision by the bar associations (see China’s Rule of Law Mirage for a more detailed explanation of these provisions).

But MOJ’s new oath, which overrides ACLA’s oath, reflects its effort to maintain control of the profession.  And its requirement that lawyers pledge allegiance to the CCP is eerily reminiscent of Nazi Germany where lawyers took a similar Party allegiance oath: “I swear to remain loyal to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, and to fulfill conscientiously the duties of a German attorney, so help me God” (See Matthew Lippman, Law, Lawyers, and Legality in the Third Reich: The Perversion of Principle and Professionalism, 11 Temp. Int’l & Comp. L.J. 199, 218 n. 185 (1997)).

Ultimately, the oath won’t impact the daily work of most of China’s lawyers.  In fact, it is only applicable to new lawyers or those who are re-applying for their licenses (首次取 得或者重新申请取得律师执业证书的人员); MOJ’s announcement makes no mention of its applicability to current lawyers at their yearly re-registration (年度注册); presumably current lawyers will not be subject to the oath.  But in a society where rhetoric has served as important signaling device as to what behavior is politically acceptable, the new oath could potentially have a chilling effect on current public interest lawyer’s work and could discourage new lawyers from representing individuals and issues that are perceived as politically dangerous.  It’s this chilling effect of the new oath that is the greatest threat to a rule of law in China.

Light refreshments will be served at the China Chat!

Hopkins Nanjing Center and Asia Catalyst are sponsoring an informal “China Chat” about legal services organizations in China.  Lawyers from the All China Environment Federation and from the Beijing Migrant Worker Legal Aid Station will speak about their work, cases they have brought and obstacles they have faced.  We read about the work of many of these lawyers in the New York Times and the South China Morning Post, but rarely is there an opportunity to hear directly for the lawyers doing the work themselves.

RSVP is required to this exciting event: skrumm@asiactalyst.org

March 12, 2012
6:30 pm – 8 pm
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts Gallery (ECFA)
14 Jay Street
Tribeca, New York, NY

Directions:  Take the #1 subway to Franklin Street, walk one block west to Hudson and two blocks south to Jay Street, make a right. ECFA is on the left-hand side going toward Greenwich.

Light Refreshments will be served!

Please RSVP to skrumm@asiacatalyst.org

Human rigfhts activist and lawyer, Chen Guangcheng

One would think that a poor, illiterate, blind man, who eventually learned to read in his early 20s, taught himself the law, and used those legal skills to protect the rights of society’s most vulnerable, would be celebrated.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for Chen Guangcheng.  Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer in rural China who blazed the way for China’s nascent disability rights law is currently under unlawful house arrest with his wife and two small children, guarded 24 hours a day by local thugs, denied access to medical care as well as to all visitors and at times subject to physical abuse.

While this has been the status quo for Chen and his family since September 2010, the situation has just become more dire.  Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), a well-respected China human rights group, reported last week that a sympathetic guard informed CHRD that Chen has grown increasingly ill, collapsing after walking only a few steps in his yard.  Chen suffers from severe gastroenteritis, a condition left untreated while he served an unjust four-year-and three-month prison term and that still remains untreated even though he is “free.”

It is time that the United States’ government publicly expresses its concern for Chen’s health, question the legal basis of Chen’s current house imprisonment, highlight China’s violations of international law treatment in its treatment of Chen, and demand that China follow through with its invitation to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights to visit its country. Recent developments reflect that international pressure may change the Chinese government’s behavior.

How Did Chen Guangcheng Go from Good Guy to Enemy of the Chinese State?

Chen’s short legal career centered on fighting for the rights of China’s most vulnerable: those with disabilities.  After winning a series of cases, including one requiring the Beijing subway system to waive fares for the disabled, Chen turned his attention to a new injustice that was occurring in his own hometown in Linyi county in Shandong Province.

In early 2005, Chen’s neighbors began to tell him stories of forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and even abduction and physical abuse of relatives by government officials so that the Linyi government could meet a significantly lower birth rate quota imposed by Linyi’s new mayor, Li Qun.

While China maintains a one-child policy, forced abortions and sterilizations are illegal under Chinese law.  Unfortunately, as an investigation by Chen and supportive lawyers from Bejing uncovered, because local officials’ promotions are tied with keeping birthrates low, the law criminalizing forced abortions and sterilizations is sometimes ignored, especially in rural areas.  By the summer of 2005, Chen filed multiple lawsuits in Linyi on behalf of many of the victims.

But as Chen was to find out, China’s legal reform only goes so far: fighting for the rights of the disabled are acceptable; but cases challenging China’s sacrosanct and politically sensitive one-child policy are decidedly not.  Even a well-respected, blind rights lawyer puts his safety on the line if he seeks to challenge the administration of the one-child policy.

In what amounted to kangaroo justice, in September 2005, Chen was placed under strict house arrest by the Linyi government, eventually charged with “gathering crowds to undermine traffic order,” found guilty in a trial where his lawyers were not allowed to attend, and in 2006, sentenced to four years-and-three-months in prison.

Chen Guangcheng’s Life Since September 2010 – An Absurd Version of Freedom

In September 2010, Chen completed his four-plus-year jail term only to learn that his home would become his prison.  Lacking any legal basis under Chinese law and in contravention to multiple international treaties, since his “release,” Chen and his wife have not been able to leave their home.  Chen’s six-year old daughter, Kesi, was initially denied access to school.  But, after much domestic and international pressure, Kesi is now permitted to go to school, walked to and from school by the thugs who surround her home, unable to play with any of her classmates.

Freedom House reportsthat Chen and his family are completely surrounded by thugs hired by the Linyi government to keep all visitors out and keep Chen in.  It is estimated that the

Christian Bale, accosted by Linyi "security guards" in his attempt to visit Chen Guangcheng in December 2011

local government has hired almost 100 men to maintain 24-7 surveillance of Chen and his family.  These thugs resort to force to keep all visitors out, physically attacking Chen’s friends, reporters, foreign government officials, and even Batman star Christian Bale who attempted to visit Chen last December.  Freedom House also reports that surveillance checkpoints points have been set up on various roads into the village, six cameras positioned throughout the village to record all activity and two cell phone jammers make it impossible for Chen and his family to communicate with the outside world.

In February 2011, a sympathetic government source smuggled to ChinaAid, a U.S.-based China human rights group,   a video recording that Chen made of his new life.  Soon after ChinaAid posted the video to its website, the Linyi thugs entered Chen’s home and beat him and his wife for close to two hours.  After the severe beating, Chen and his wife were denied medical treatment.

The continued denial of all medical treatment and Chen’s worsening gastroenteritis has appeared to raise Chen’s medical condition to emergency status, distressing his friends and supporters. Chen’s longstanding friend lawyer Jiang Tianyong, himself the victim of ‘forced disappearance,’ retweeted a recent comment from another that ‘everybody’s now just waiting for the news that Chen Guangcheng has died; so we can erect a memorial for him….’ Jiang’s immediate and emotional reaction to any thought that his friend could die: ‘you’re really sick.’

Prof. Jerome A. Cohen, a Chinese legal scholar with over 60 years of experience in China likely thought that China’s worst was behind it.  But the current situation with his friend Chen Guangcheng visibly alarms the old China hand.  “This cruel, slow killing seems to be the only way the Party can think of to rid itself of a courageous critic without having him appear to die in its custody” Cohen told China Law & Policy.

Will International Pressure Change the Chinese Government’s Treatment of Chen?

On one level, the internationally community doesn’t have a choice if it wants Chen Guangcheng to live.  But on another level, pressure in this case would be a smart strategic move.  Although the Chinese central government is fully aware of the abuse of Chen and his family, it isn’t directly perpetuating it.  The torture of Chen and his family is largely the result of Linyi’s officials’ vengeance.  In statements to foreign officials, Chinese officials have allegedly explained that “house arrest does not exist under Chinese law” and that Chen is free and leading a “normal life.”

If foreign and domestic pressure remains strong, the Chinese central government will have less of an incentive to acquiesce to the Linyi’s government blatant violations of Chinese law.  Other signs seem to indicate that not everyone in the Chinese government is on board with Linyi officials’ behavior.  Although Chen and his family are being held completely incommunicado, information is still able to get out.  ChinaAid receives information, including the smuggled video and letters from Chen’s wife, from a “reliable government source;” CHRD learned of Chen’s worsening medical condition from a sympathetic guard.

Chen & family

In October 2011, the Global Times, a state-run newspaper that is considered the voice of the Chinese Communist Party’s hardliners, published an editorial attempting to distance the central government from Linyi government’s actions.   As CHRD reported in “Let There Be Light, Let There Be Sincerity: Citizens Campaign to Free Chen Guangcheng,” there is a growing citizen campaign to free Chen, even with the censorship of most news regarding Chen.  In December 2011, several of Chen’s collegues and friends made a film about Chen – “Who is Chen Guangcheng” – publicly calling for his release (film is in Mandarin with no subtitles).

Foreign governments should hold the Chinese government to its statement that Chen is leading a “normal life” and specifically request that Chinese government officials accompany foreign officials to visit Chen Guangcheng.  Given his worsening condition, foreign governments should make this a priority.  Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, DC offered the perfect opportunity to publicly raise the U.S. government’s concern for Chen’s health; unfortunately it didn’t.

The United Nations should bring public attention to China’s clear violations of the of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25, the right to adequate health) as well as violations of treaties it has voluntarily ratified including: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 12 for denial of medical care); the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Convention on Rights of the Child (for denying Kesi the freedom of association (Article 15), for the mental anguish caused by her imprisonment (Article 19), for denying her the right to play (Article 31)).   In addition, the Human Rights Council should look to issue a new opinion concerning Chen’s arbitrary detention to update its 2006 opinion when Chen was first held under unlawful house arrest.

Finally, the international community should demand that China follow through with its invitation to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights to visit its country.  In 2009, the Chinese government invited the High Commissioner to visit China and see first-hand China’s human rights situation, both good and bad.  That was two years ago and China still hasn’t allowed the current High Commissioner to visit.  But if China waits only a few more months, it won’t have to worry: the current High Commissioner’s term expires this fall.

The fact that China verbally commits to human rights reviews and ratifies certain conventions demonstrates that international status means something to it; not necessarily enough to always abide by human rights laws, but enough for international pressure in the case of Chen to make a difference.

What About the Forced Abortions, the Issue that Caused all of this?

In September 2005, soon after Chen was placed under his first house arrest, China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, the government agency that oversees China’s one-child policy, conducted its own investigation and announced that government-enforced abortions and sterilizations occurred in Linyi in contravention of China’s law.  Although many officials were arrested and penalized for their behavior, Li Qun, the mayor who initialized Linyi’s campaign of forced abortions, was eventually promoted and today serves as Party Secretary of the major metropolis Qingdao.

Li’s promotion demonstrates the importance of people like Chen Guangcheng, those willing to put their lives on the line to protect citizens’ rights and dignity; rule of law might not be what local governments want but it is what the Chinese people are desperate for.

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Below are sources that can provide more information on Chen Guangcheng, his legal career and his current struggle:

• Philip Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, Chapter 7 – Blind Justice, (Simon & Schuster 2009) (describing Chen’s legal career, Linyi’s harsh one-child policy, and the 2006 arrest and trial of Chen);
• Jerome A. Cohen has written and spoken extensively on Chen’s persecution since his release from prison.  Articles calling for change can be found here and here;
• Peter Foster, Beijing correspondent for The Telegraph has a good piece here on the effectiveness of Chinese citizens’ “Free Chen Guangcheng” campaign and their efforts to enter his village.
• Congressional-Executive Commission on China has brief background on Chen as well as a list of those who have attempted to visit him here (current through Dec. 11, 2011).

To listen to the audio of the entire discussion, please click here. 
Length: 1 hour 51 minutes

China's relations with Zambia is largely about copper

Phelim Kine on Chinese Abuses of Workers’ Rights in Zambia

By James J. Baber*

On February 6, 2012, Phelim Kine, a Senior Asia Researcher for Human Rights Watch, spoke at Seton Hall Law about his experiences investigating the business practices of Chinese corporations investing in Zambia’s copper mines.  Mr. Kine presented the official Human Rights Watch (“HRW”) report “You’ll Be Fired If You Refuse”: Labor Abuses in Zambia’s Chinese State-owned Copper Mines“.  The event was hosted by Seton Hall Law Professor Margaret K. Lewis, a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow with the National Committee on US-China Relations.  Mr. Tom Kellogg, Program Director and Advisor to the President of Open Society Institute, also took part, offering commentary on the report.

The Human Rights Watch report details the persistent abuses in Chinese-run mines, including poor health and safety conditions, regular 12-hour and even 18-hour shifts involving arduous labor and anti-union activities, all in violation of Zambia’s national laws or international labor standards. The four Chinese-run copper mining companies in Zambia are subsidiaries of China Non-Ferrous Metals Mining Corporation, a state-owned enterprise under the authority of China’s highest executive body. Copper mining is the lifeblood of the Zambian economy, contributing nearly 75 percent of the country’s exports and two-thirds of the central government revenue.

The discussion focused on HRW’s concerns regarding Chinese business practices overseas. A central question is whether the Chinese government or Chinese state-owned firms are effectively “exporting” the kinds of abuses – of labor rights and rights of freedom of expression and association that occur all-too-frequently in China – to foreign countries which are targets of Chinese investment.

Mr. Kine began by speaking about labor practices in the Chinese-run copper mines in Zambia.  China has had for some time a massive presence in Africa, and the copper mines in

Zambian copper miners

Zambia are an extension of this long-term investment.  The driving force behind this modern day scramble for Africa is a desire of the Chinese government to both secure new markets and to maintain a stable flow of resources for its rapidly expanding economy.  According to Mr. Kine, despite the badly needed foreign investment and job opportunities that the Chinese investment brings to Zambia, the relationship leaves something to be desired from the Zambian workers’ perspective.  Mr. Kine stated that the conditions in some mines were found to be a “flagrant violation of both Zambian law and international law.”  HRW interviewed numerous workers to obtain first-hand information about the miners’ working conditions.  The HRW investigators uncovered various abuses of workers’ rights, ranging from the firing of workers who refused to work in hazardous areas to the manifest reluctance of the Chinese firms to provide their workers with proper safety and protective equipment.  Despite the issues and clear dangers involved, however, few of the miners quit these jobs because of the high double-digit unemployment in Zambia.  [See CIA Handbook for a review of Zambia's economy]

In total, the HRW researchers interviewed 170 people and found three main problems: abuses of the miners’ legal rights to health and safety, violations of overtime pay requirements, and what Mr. Kine called a “pronounced anti-union sentiment” in the Chinese mines.  The miners were routinely denied access to, or left unsupplied with, personal safety equipment like protective clothing and respirators.  Mr. Kine stated that workers at the Chinese mines were also paid “one third to one sixth less than their international competitors.”  In addition, the Zambian miners were severely discouraged from associating with one of the two national unions, thereby depriving the miners of the right to associate.

After Mr. Kine concluded his initial presentation, Tom Kellogg raised additional questions and offered comments. Mr. Kellogg spoke about the common perception of the local Africans that the Zambian government encouraged the influx of Chinese investment and thus the Zambian government gave only lax scrutiny to the mines’ labor practices.

Despite the Chinese government’s history of bluntly refuting international criticism, Mr. Kellogg noted that the Chinese government is beginning to present a more evolved response to international criticism.  He specifically mentioned the detailed response of Chinese authorities with regard to the letter from HRW detailing reported issues within the mines.  Mr. Kellogg speculated on whether or not such a response would have happened five years ago.

The microphone was then returned to Mr. Kine for response.  He responded to Mr. Kellogg’s suggestion of Beijing’s possible new openness to international criticism as opposed to the traditional stonewalling.  He noted that HRW had in fact been able to speak directly with the China Nonferrous Mining Corporation in order to address alleged violations of the Zambian workers’ rights.  Mr. Kine also highlighted that all of the Zambian workers with whom HRW spoke stated that they were happy to have jobs despite complaints about the working conditions.  Zambia suffers from both high unemployment and an AIDs epidemic.  And the jobs and infrastructure provided by the Chinese companies are significant assets to the African nation.

Professor Lewis then commented that the Zambian laws regarding mining were quite good on paper but, as noted by one of the interviewees in the report, seemed to be disconnected from the reality on the ground.  Other questions revolved around whether the miners were aware of international labor laws and whether foreign consumers might play a more pronounced role in demanding better labor practices in copper mines.

Professor Lewis also commented on Beijing’s soft power push to present a new image by spreading Chinese culture through the Confucius institutes and classrooms.  The Chinese government is being more responsive to international human rights concerns, but Professor Lewis noted that the current crisis in Syria shows that Beijing is still very concerned about not being seen as promoting popular uprisings or infringing on a state’s sovereignty.

Mr. Kine then noted that the Zambian government has very limited resources at its disposal to combat the issues arising out of the Chinese-owned-and operated mine facilities.  A lack of

Workers strike at Chinese mine in Zambia

money and manpower coupled with the apparent lack of importance that the Chinese government places on human rights in its overseas endeavors is creating a very difficult situation for the Zambian miners.  However, Mr. Kine did find cause to express some hope for the future.  Recently, a Zambian government official had threatened to shut down a mine (albeit a privately invested mine, not a Chinese state-invested one) that did not conform to safety codes.  Mr. Kine thought that this action might indicate that the Zambian government will in the future be better able to provide for the safety of Zambian citizens who work in the copper mines.  Mr. Kine, in fact, called the Zambian threat to close the mine, “a shot across the bow” that may help convince the Chinese government to start toeing the line with more vigor.

The presentation concluded with a lengthy question and answer segment, in which the three experts tackled various questions both about China in general and the discussion at hand.  One questioner asked whether the Chinese companies could in fact be forced out of their mines for rampant safety violations.  Mr. Kine stated that this approach was “worth testing” because the Zambian government needs to use its leverage more directly, instead of engaging in mere fiery rhetoric. He then again referenced the renewed push by the Zambian government to assert its authority by threatening to close one of the mines.  The discussion ended on a high note, with the three presenters presenting their “wish lists” for the future of change in China.

* The author is a first-year Juris Doctor student at Seton Hall University School of Law, and received his BA in Philosophy from the University of San Francisco. Mr. Baber is a member of Seton Hall’s International Law Society.

Pleco Founder & CEO, Michael Love

Perhaps not since Prof. John DeFrancis, with his publication in the early 1960s of the 12 volume series of Mandarin Chinese textbooks, has anyone so revolutionized the study of Chinese like Michael Love.  In 1999, while living in Beijing between high school and college, Michael became so frustrated with the time and effort it took to look up an unfamiliar character in a Chinese dictionary that he used his computer skills to create an electronic dictionary for his Palm Pilot.  Soon other students in his class were buying Palm Pilots just so they could use Michael’s software.  Upon his return to the States, and while he was studying computer science at Harvard, Michael founded Pleco, an online Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary where students of the language can look up Chinese characters via pinyin, handwriting, or camera phone.  Yes, before the age of 20, Michael was well on his way to starting his own company and changing the way Americans learn Chinese.

Fortunately for China Law & Policy, Michael Love is not just a symbol of American ingenuity, but also very generous with his time.  After releasing the Droid version of Pleco, Michael sat down with China Law & Policy to muse about the way we learn languages, the future of Pleco, and the obstacles he faces as an internet company in doing business in China.

Click here to listen to the interview with Pleco founder and CEO, Michael Love or read below for the entire transcript.
Length: 27 minutes (audio will open in a separate browser)

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[1:08]EL: Thank you for joining us today Michael.  So after more than 10 years in the business, where are we today with Pleco?

[1:16] ML:  I just finished what I call a major transitional period, basically because smartphones themselves and mobile devices themselves have just gone through a huge transition.  Most of our efforts the last three to four years have been focused getting from the sort of old-fashioned PDAs – windows mobile, palm pilots – to the iPhone and Android–   to the modern devices people want now.  And there’s a lot of changes built; it gives us a lot more capabilities: obviously much faster hardware, much better and bigger screens, but also different interfaces.  People now are controlling the device with their fingers instead of styluses.  That has really forced us to redesign a lot of things, rethink the way we do a lot of things.  There is better internet connectivity.  These have all influenced the design of our software.

[02:08] So we – I wouldn’t say have been treading water –  but we’ve been kind of spending a lot of time dealing with those issues and not so much time lately on expanding our notions of what we can do with electronic Chinese learning and now we’re getting back in the direction of new stuff again.  We are thinking of interesting new features we can add; new things we can do with flashcards; new ways of looking up characters.  We’re shifting back from this platform-focused phase to a phase were we are more thinking about Chinese again, which honestly is really much more fun.

[02:42] As far as how Pleco is doing, we have several orders of magnitude more customers than we have ever had before.  The App Store is awesome, the Android Market is pretty awesome; people looking for a Chinese dictionary with a few buttons can download our app, try it out. So our reach has expanded enormously and that’s great.  We make apps because we like for people to use our apps; we want to help people learn Chinese, and if we can do that for more people, that’s great.  We love this transformation and now that were finally up to date, now that we are finally on iPhone, Android, iPad and all sorts of other stuff, we can once again turn back to improving Chinese learning for everyone.

[03:24] EL: So you guys just released – Pleco just released its Droid app.  So it is downloadable now for the Droid?

[03:29] ML: Yeah.  Android Market.  Just [type in] P-L-E-C-O.  It should be the first thing that comes up.  Though since Pleco is actually a type of fish, a type of aquarium catfish, there

Pleco the catfish

are actually a few apps related to the catfish that will come up too.  But the first app you look for P-L-E-C-O in Android Market should be ours

[03:49] EL: So in terms of some of the other technology, you now have OCR [“Optical Character Recognition”] software that can recognize a character if you take a picture of it.  Can you tell us more about that?

[03:59] ML: Yeah, this is something that has been floating around actually as an idea for years, and years, and years.  People were writing this way back when the first Palm Treo with a little dinky VGA camera you can use for taking postage stamp like photos that didn’t really look very good.

[04:17] People have been saying “hey wouldn’t it be good to take a picture of a character and look it up” for a long time and finally – summer 2010 – Apple released a new version of IOS that added, for the first time, a really good direct way to get at what phone cameras see and do stuff with it.  That combined with the latest generation of mobile processors, the speed we get on modern iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S made it possible for us to use a sort of algorithm that had been floating around for a long time to instantaneously look up Chinese characters in the phone camera.  So the technology of Chinese OCR has been around for 10 years.  People would use it on a flatbed scanner.  Just like with English, you put your Chinese paper on a scanner; but now the cameras are good enough, the optics are good enough, the process is good enough that you can do this on an iPhone or an Android phone, you can do it instantly.  So it’s great.  Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  The first time we got it working in our labs, that was kind of the reaction, that holy crap now we can point cameras at things and look up characters.  Yeah, it’s great, it’s easily the best selling, most popular feature we have ever offered

[05:40] EL:  It  seems like everybody I know who speaks Chinese or studies Chinese uses Pleco.  How many customers or downloads have you had?  How big is your customer base, if you know?  

[05:52] ML:  It’s tough to tell exactly because we get download numbers, we don’t get usage numbers.  We don’t believe in app metrics, we don’t believe in collecting data about people’s usage of our app.  It’s kind of a privacy violation and a lot of our customers, for political or other reasons, are rather privacy sensitive so we don’t collect any metrics.  We don’t measure what you are doing with the app.  So for that reason, we don’t exactly know how many people are actively using Pleco day-to-day.  But just based on our download numbers and anecdotal reports and so forth, it’s in the high six to low seven figures.

[06:31] EL: That’s pretty impressive.  So right now, what do you see – you mentioned a little bit on what you want to focus now with Pleco, where you want to take it.  What do you see as the future of [Pleco]?  Do you think there will be a translation tool on the level of Google Translate or hopefully something better?

[06:49] ML: Google Translate is in a different field than what we’re doing.  They’re really about making it so you don’t have to learn Chinese.  That’s neat and for a lot of people who don’t have the time, who don’t want to learn Chinese, who want to communicate in a dozen different languages, that’s great.  We’re all for lowering the barriers to communication.

[07:10] We’ve only been focused on people learning Chinese and for them, we actually think just sentence translation is counterproductive.  If there is even one or two words in the sentence that you do know, then the mental act of remembering those words, is going to be really good for you in learning your Chinese.  We love the idea of making it easy for looking up words you don’t know, piece together things, but we want you to have to look in some sort of mental translation operation yourself to put this together, to think about it, to improve your own Chinese ability and that’s what we’ve been focused on.

[07:49] So our future plans mostly revolve around that.  We’ve got a lot of new things we are working on for flashcards; we want to have a better type of audio flashcard.  We look at lessons like Pimsleur that will sort of teach you Chinese through audio prompting and sort of a set pattern.  We think we can improve on that with something more interactive.  We’re looking at other ways of just practical things like synchronizing flashcards between your iPad and your iPhone which is actually really complicated for a variety of reasons.

[08:22] And better dictionaries, better content.  We’ve been asking about commissioning our own versions of a few types of content.  For example, we’ve never found a really, really good, comprehensive Chinese menu reader.  We’d love to have some kind of a guide, a reference of   tens of thousands of Chinese dishes and what they are.  It’s funny because the same poetic Chinese name will apply to one thing in one area and another in [a different] area.  We want to get it in all of them.  So a comprehensive menu reader, we think it would be a great thing.  We think it would be great for OCR certainly.  Since no one has developed one, we are thinking of commissioning one ourselves.

[09:02] EL: I just want to jump off of something you mentioned when we compared Pleco to Google Translate.  You were saying that Google Translate is not a tool for people to learn Chinese and Pleco is very much a tool for people to learn Chinese.  In a way [Pleco] has been a huge innovation in the way that students learn Chinese.  But it isn’t without controversy, specifically in the way that foreign [non-native Chinese] students learn Chinese characters.  I’m wondering if you could just give for our listeners who don’t speak or have never studied Chinese, if you could just give a little bit of background about how – before Pleco – someone would look up a character in a dictionary.   For example, let’s say I am reading a newspaper in Chinese, I see a character I don’t recognize – there is no Romanization for it so I don’t even know how to pronounce it – how, before Pleco, did someone look that up in a dictionary?

[09:57] ML:  Well the main way was using a system actually developed in the 18^th, 17^th [century] – well it may have been even longer than that – called radicals.  So there are a couple hundred basic pieces that is the closest thing Chinese has to an alphabet.  Basically pieces of characters, most of them tied to old-fashioned pictograms, that between them pretty much all Chinese characters are assembled from some combination of these couple hundred pieces.

Each of the 4 characters have the "man" radical on the left. You would use this radical as the first step in looking up each character in the dictionary.

[10:25] What you used to do is that you would find the first one of these pieces – and there is a whole set of rules for that – the most prominent, the most important one of these pieces in a character.  You look at the character, you’d figure what that piece was, sometimes you’d have to guess about that.

[10:41] Then you would look up in a very complicated index [in a dictionary]; you’d get a list of all the characters that contained that piece as their primary radical.  Those would be grouped usually by the number of strokes that are not part of that radical.  And then further sorted by the type of stroke that was the first stroke.  So basically you’d have to figure out what the most prominent component is to this character, look that up in a very long, very small-printed index, go to the right page with a list of all the characters containing that radical, count the number of strokes – so you have to know Chinese stroke order pretty well and Chinese stroke break downs pretty well – count the number of strokes in the character outside of the radical, find that section of the index, and then scan through this long list of characters to find the character you are looking for.

[10:35] So even when you’re pretty good at this it usually takes 30 seconds to a minute and then you have to flip through the dictionary to find the actual things.  It’s painstaking.  It makes it really, really hard to read or made it really, really hard to read a Chinese text you didn’t know.

[11:51] EL: In terms of the radical, the radical – just to clarify for our readers – often does give the character meaning.  So if you have the three water drops, you know that character is related to water.  But with Pleco because you can use either the stylus on the Palm Pilot or for the iPhone or Droid, you can use your finger to draw the character, you don’t need to identify the radical anymore.  So you don’t need to know which radicals have what meaning and you don’t necessarily need to know stroke order anymore – how the Chinese, for thousands of years have written the character.   Do you think Pleco is downplaying the traditional way in which one learned Chinese?  Has there been any loss in not forcing students of Chinese language to learn radicals or stroke order, if that’s even happening?

[12:42] ML:  I think the art of Chinese writing and Chinese calligraphy should not be as prominent a part of the Chinese language curriculum as it is because, honestly, even Chinese people don’t do that that much anymore.  For the last twenty years or so at least, the majority of written Chinese is written on computers.  When Chinese people compose Chinese text on computers they don’t handwrite, they don’t use a radical index, they just key in the Romanized pronunciation of the thing they are trying to write.

[13:18] It turns out if you look at a Chinese computer keyboard, it looks like an American computer keyboard, it’s the same kind of letter based system.  That’s way faster than anything character based with the exception of a specialized methods called wubi and cangjie that I won’t get into.  Most Chinese people write Chinese with an English language keyboard and therefore don’t really ever need to – well hardly ever need to – do anything with stroke order.

[13:43] So the notion that American, European, other foreign students of Chinese need to – even Chinese students to some extent – need to learn to write really well is outdated.  We

A character-intensive Chinese lesson!

don’t handwrite anymore; we haven’t been handwriting for decades.  We use keyboards.  [As for] stroke order, it’s an interesting historical item, it still has some relevance today in understanding how characters are built, certainly it can help you understand characters if you build up some fluency with radicals, with the way characters are constructed, with meanings of those piece, but I don’t think it is anywhere near as important to a Chinese curriculum as learning to speak, learning to read, learning to understand what people say.  To the extent that Pleco is discouraging people from spending a lot of time early on in their Chinese studies learning to practice writing Chinese characters, I don’t think we’re hurting Chinese learning.  I think we are helping people focus on the parts that really matter.

[14:42] EL:  Do you have any idea about how a tool like Pleco or other translation tools, like NJ Star if you are on the computer, how that’s being used today in colleges and high schools in the United States to teach Chinese?  Do you have any idea about that?

[15:01] ML: A lot of that actually has to do with the changing nature of the Chinese teacher population in the U.S.  In the very early days it was sort of a random accumulation; you had a lot of people who had taken Chinese as a second language, knew enough and happened to already be teachers so they would have a little elective class at whatever school it was in Chinese.

[15:20] Then you had a bunch of disgruntled expats who left China in the 80s or 90s and were kind of set on this very old-fashioned way of teaching Chinese; very focused on rote memorization, on practicing things over, and over, and over again, and just sort of felt that the best sort of way to learn Chinese was the way they learned Chinese when they were kids which we would now consider outdated.  We did the same things in the U.S. in those days which we no longer do, just very rote memorization-based.

[15:54] Recently however, [in] the last decade or so, younger people have started teaching Chinese, people who have come up more recently, people with educational degrees, people who have a more modern way of thinking about teaching language.  So they’ve proven much more receptive to a natural language approach to learning Chinese.  They increasingly appreciate that you maybe shouldn’t be quite so fixated on learning characters early.  They appreciate the importance of exposing students to real world reading materials, not just things that were in a textbook, sort of made-up reading materials.  They appreciate even more conversation practice.

[16:33] So Pleco, I think we have always been more in the latter strategy.  We’ve been from the very beginning about helping people work with real Chinese more easily, lowering that barrier.  As far as other tools, like Google Translate, I still don’t really view Google Translate as a Chinese learning tool.  I view it more as a tool for people who don’t know Chinese at all or whose Chinese level is just not even close to what it would need to be to understand something to muddle through.  In my early days of Pleco, I would sometimes run a Chinese language contract or a Chinese language document which I wasn’t sure of my translation, I would run it through [Google Translate] to sort of check to make sure I wasn’t missing something.  It’s good for stuff like that.  But it’s not really a learning tool, it’s more of a learning replacement.  Sort of a mediocre translator to help you through stuff that you are just not confident to do yourself.

[17:29] EL:  Let’s switch beers, oops, gears – I should let listeners know we are in a bar doing this interview.  But let’s switch gears a bit and talk about your experiences in China and currently what Pleco is doing in China.  Is Pleco used by Chinese students learning English and do you do a lot of business in China? 

[17:52] ML:  Actually, no.  There are two reasons for that.  Part of it is that we never really targeted that market.  In the early days mostly because there was so much piracy it just didn’t seem worth it.  We literally had people selling our Palm OS software on CDs in Zhongguancun, in computer markets, that looked so real that people would write to us for technical support for this pirated copy of our software because they didn’t realize they bought a pirated copy. So we kind of dismissed it early on as “well we’re not going to make any money off of this market anyway so let them make their own software.” And that’s what a lot of Chinese software companies did.

[18:32] More recently, it’s just that we don’t really think we can do it as well with the kind of materials we have.  A Chinese-English dictionary for someone learning Chinese, you are going to want to have extremely sensitive vocabulary coverage, you want any possible word they might encounter to be covered, but you don’t need to be very detailed necessarily in the definitions.  You may want a lot of example sentences, but you’re not try to provide comprehensive listing of every English word you might use to translate a Chinese word.  A Chinese person is looking at Chinese to English dictionary almost like a thesaurus, at least that is one of its functions: “I have this Chinese concept I want to translate into English; I don’t necessarily need a comprehensive Chinese-English dictionary because if it doesn’t have this word I’ll type in another word that means the same thing; but I really want it to give me all the different ways of saying this in English and all the different commutations so that I can master the right way of doing this in English.”

[19:28] Fundamentally, Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionaries, people learning Chinese and people learning English, are totally different.  So we have focused all of our efforts on the people learning Chinese.  Our software features are tailored toward them.  A Chinese person doesn’t need an OCR system to look up a Chinese character; they just type in its pronunciation because they know it.  While they seem like very similar operations, they’re really different enough that it doesn’t make sense for one company to focus on both.  So we don’t.

[20:00] EL: In terms of your business, do you go back to China a lot with Pleco?

[20:07] ML: I go back about once a year.  Meeting up mostly with companies that we do licensing business with, companies we get dictionaries from, companies we want to license more dictionaries from, companies that develop interesting technology we’d like to use.  Occasionally we will run into a product that has some interesting idea that we want to either shamelessly copy or take inspiration from because there is a little bit of overlap between the process of Chinese people learning English and English speakers learning Chinese.  Occasionally we will learn something from them and I think they have gotten some ideas from us over the years.  But mostly when I go to China it is to talk to business partners.

[20:55] EL: You mentioned piracy as one of the reasons why….well, the big reason seems to be that the Chinese audience, the product you’re producing is for foreigners studying Chinese but you have mentioned piracy a little bit.  Has that been a problem for Pleco in China?  And do you do anything about that?

[21:16] ML: It depends on the product actually.  It was a huge problem for us with Windows Mobile in 2008 or so.  We released a new version we had been working on for two years and it was pirated almost immediately. That was a bummer because it really did hurt our sales a lot.  But on iPhone there is really very little piracy problems because any iPhone that hasn’t been what’s called “jail broken” to run non-Apple approved apps basically can’t run pirated software; it’s impossible, there is no way to do it, the phone will just refuse to run a pirated app.  Jail breaking your iPhone violates the warranty.  So we see very little piracy on iPhone.

[21:56] On the Android it’s too early to know.  We are hoping that it will take them a while to crack it and that it won’t be widely pirated.  But at the very least on iPhones there is very little loss to piracy.

[22:12] EL: Before the iPhone, with the Windows-based [program] and it was pirated almost immediately, as a business person doing business in China, did that make you feel that you did not want to be in the Chinese market?  What do you think can be done to change that?   Or do you think it’s inevitable?

[22:36] ML:  I think at some point you have to provide a better value proposition; that’s always been the issue with piracy; it’s true with media too.  People will pay some money for the convenience of downloading your app legally – having updates, having support, the things  that a pirated version simply can’t provide – are worth something to people.  In a lot of cases it’s a pricing and a convenience problem.  People pirate TV series because there is no easy place for them to watch them online without ads.  If our software couldn’t be downloaded quite so easily, I think we would see a lot more piracy.  If our stuff was only offered in CD say, people would pirate it because that would be the only way to download and get it immediately.

[23:21] The problem is that the Chinese naturally place a much lower value on a given piece of content than Westerns do just because of what they are used to paying for it.  Even if a Westerner would consider our prices perfectly reasonable, a Chinese person might not.  So we have this awkward situation – we’d have to make some sort of a Chinese market product priced at a level a Chinese person could be comfortable with in order to keep them from pirating.  There have certainly been attempts at doing that, but really for us we’re happy with our primarily Western customer base.  Really, the reason we are worried about piracy in China is that it makes it easier for honest Westerners [in China] who might otherwise pay us for our product to pirate it.  We don’t really care about Chinese people using pirated copies of our software, we don’t think they were going to pay for it anyway; but Westerners might have.  We want to make it just hard enough that they won’t pirate.

[24:10] EL: In terms of talking about piracy and some of the issues of Chinese law, as an online commerce operation do you have any experience with internet censorship, any of those issues that have been in a lot in the press lately with China?

[24:26] ML: We have never been blocked.  We’ve taken certain preventative measures to make sure that things that might cause us to be Great Firewalled would be isolated.  Our discussion forum site is on a different domain name, different IP address.  So if the Chinese government ever took issue with something someone posted on our public forums, their block of that site would not prevent people from accessing our official company site and downloading our software and so on.  So we’ve taken some measures against that but they haven’t really been necessary so far.

Slow download speeds in China

[24:57] There is a little bit of an issue just physically, network typology, in China with the Great Firewall.  It is hard for a Western company to offer good download speeds for people downloading files, downloading software in China.  There are some very expensive Chinese distribution systems that will work around that; we haven’t yet seen fit to pay, seeing that as a good value for us because they are generally tailored to much larger companies and they cost a lot of money and we can’t really afford it.  So most people in China download our software from Hong Kong and get so-so performance but good enough that people don’t complain too much.  It would be nice if it was easier for a foreign company offering relatively innocuous downloads to have a server in China so people could download our stuff more quickly.

[25:50] So the existence of ICP numbers and the difficulties of getting a website passed the firewall where you can distribute high speed downloads [or] media, etc. to Chinese people, that’s been a bit of a hassle but that’s the only issue we’ve had with China censorship so far.

[26:07] EL: In general, this problem with not having the quicker download speeds and the fact that you do have to do a little bit of a work around for your blog, which is basically questions and answers about the software, have you seen any changes in the Chinese government’s approach to the internet over the ten, twelve years that you’ve been doing business on line?  A lot of the press has been talking about the increased laws that China has been passing to regulate the internet.  But has that affected foreign business?

[26:40] ML: A little bit.  It means that we need to use China-market specific means to reach our customers.  We have a Twitter feed and a Facebook feed and those do absolutely no good for our customers in China because they can’t access Twitter or Facebook, so we need to have a work around.  We need to have a Weibo blog too.  Chinese customers can’t access YouTube so we have to have alternate videos for them.  That didn’t used to be a problem years ago because they [the Chinese government] weren’t quite so aggressive in blocking social networking, in blocking open-content sharing sites.  So that’s been a bit of a hassle.

[27:16] Beyond that….as far as the network typology problems I mentioned, download speeds, those have been as much of a hassle for the last ten years.  It’s sort of the nature of the Chinese internet.  It’s a bit harder to reach our customers, it’s more of an effort to share content, but it hasn’t changed for our purposes all that much.

[27:35] EL:  Well, I think that does it for now Michael.  Thank you very much for a very interesting and thought provoking interview!  Thank you.