鼓楼

Liu Xiaobo, jailed Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has passed away. See the China Digital Times for early coverage and a round-up of valuable links across current media.

“Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese dissident who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his writings promoting democracy, has been moved from prison to be treated for late-stage cancer, one of his lawyers said on Monday. Mr. Liu, who had been imprisoned in northeast China, was found in late May to have advanced liver cancer and was hospitalized soon after, said the lawyer, Shang Baojun, citing Mr. Liu’s relatives. Mr. Shang said the outlook for Mr. Liu appeared grim.”

For more, see Chris Buckley and Austin Ramzy, “Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Nobel Laureate, Leaves Prison for Cancer Care,” The New York Times (26 June 2017)

“The January 13, 1967 issue of TIME magazine featured Mao Zedong on its cover with the headline ‘China in Chaos.’ Fifty years later, TIME made U.S. President-elect Donald Trump its Man of The Year. With a groundswell of mass support, both men rebelled against the established order in their respective countries and set about throwing the world into confusion. Both share an autocratic mind set, Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Donald Trump as Chairman of the Board. As Jiaying Fan noted in May 2016, both also share a taste for ‘polemical excess and xenophobic paranoia.’ For his part, Mao’s rebellion led to national catastrophe and untold human misery.”

For more, see Geremie R. Barme, “The Chairmen, Trump and Mao,” ChinaFile (23 January 2017)

“Zhou Youguang, known as the father of Pinyin for creating the system of Romanized Chinese writing that has become the international standard since its introduction some 60 years ago, died on Saturday in Beijing, Chinese state media reported. He was 111. In recent decades, with the comparative invincibility that he felt great age bestowed on him, Mr. Zhou was also an outspoken critic of the Chinese government.”

For more on Zhou Youguang’s life and work, see Margalit Fox, “Zhou Youguang, Who Made Writing Chinese as Simple as ABC, Dies at 111,” The New York Times (14 Jan 2017)

“Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has visited the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, where he offered ‘sincere and everlasting condolences’ to the victims of Japan's attack on the base 75 years ago. ‘We must never repeat the horrors of war again, this is the solemn vow the people of Japan have taken,’ he said.”

For more, see “Japan PM Shinzo Abe Makes Landmark Visit to Pearl Harbor,” BBC News (27 Dec 2016)

“China's President Xi Jinping has called for allegiance to the ruling Communist Party from the country's colleges and universities, the latest effort by Beijing to tighten its hold on education.The government has campaigned against the spread of ‘Western values’ at universities, and in January officials said the party's discipline and anti-graft agency had sent inspectors to monitor teachers for ‘improper’ remarks in class.”

For more, see Michael Martina, “China’s Xi Calls for Universities’ Allegiance to the Communist Party,” Reuters (9 Dec 2016).

Further coverage can also be found at China Digital Times, “Xi Calls on China’s Universities to Be Communist Strongholds” (11 Dec 2016)

“When Delia Davin, the pioneer of Chinese women’s studies, arrived in Beijing in 1963, aged 19, there were still camels carrying coal and wooden ploughs in the fields outside the city. Davin, who has died of cancer aged 72, quickly established a rapport with her students at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute, whom she found to be ‘very serious about their work, but [to] have a gaiety which saves them from being priggish’. She taught them Irish songs as well as English grammar, and one of them recited ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ to console her, the student said, for not being in England on Shakespeare’s birthday.”

“Two years after the Chinese authorities sentenced the prominent Uighur intellectual Ilham Tohti to life imprisonment for promoting separatism and violence, a Swiss-based foundation awarded him a prestigious human rights prize on Tuesday for his efforts to foster dialogue and understanding.”

For more, see Nick Cumming-Bruce, “Ilham Tohti, Uighur Scholar in Chinese Prison, Is Given Human Rights Award,” The New York Times (11 October 2016)

“In Canada, it is the Québécois. In Spain, the Catalans. In Britain, the Scots.Now, China must deal with its own version of a democratically elected indigenous movement, elevated to positions of political power on Sunday in the only place in the authoritarian country where that is possible: Hong Kong.“

For more, see Michael Forsythe and Alan Wong, “Vote in Hong Kong Deepens a Thorn in China’s Side,” The New York Times (5 Sept 2016)

“The Japanese have acknowledged that their emperor is not a god and he has been stripped of all political power, but the nation still views its monarch as so central to the sense of identity that he is not permitted to resign. Now, Emperor Akihito is suggesting that his people let him retire.He is 82 years old. He has had cancer. He has had surgery. So, in a uniquely Japanese moment on Monday, he went on television to hint at his desire for Parliament to change the law so he can give the job to his son.”

“China’s expansive assertion of sovereignty over the South China Sea suffered a major blow Tuesday when an international tribunal ruled that its claims have no legal or historical basis, throwing up the possibility of a new period of tension and confrontation in the region.Beijing fiercely rejected the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which sided unequivocally with the Philippines against China. The United States urged calm.“

For more, see Simon Denyer and Emily Rauhala, “Beijing’s Claims to South China Sea Rejected by International Tribunal,” The Washington Post (12 July 2016)

“For the first time in nearly two centuries, the emperor of Japan has said that he will abdicate the throne before he dies. According to NHK, the public broadcaster in Japan, Emperor Akihito, 82, who in 1989 succeeded his father, the wartime emperor Hirohito, told close aides that he intended to pass the throne to his son, Crown Prince Naruhito, 56, before dying. No modern emperor has done so: The last emperor to abdicate was Emperor Kokaku, in 1817.“

For more, see Motoko Rich, “Emperor Akihito, in First for Japan since 1817, Plans to Abdicate,” The New York Times (13 July 2016)

“Memorial Day weekend is normally party time on Gate Street, a seedy strip of bars and clubs outside a giant United States Air Force base here. During this year’s holiday, though, Gate Street was all but deserted, its customers — young Americans from the military installations that blanket much of this southern Japanese island — barred by their superiors from partying in public.

The reason: a recent murder that has angered Okinawans and damaged relations between Tokyo and Washington.”

For more, see Jonathan Soble, “Okinawa Murder Case Heightens Outcry Over U.S. Military’s Presence,” The New York Times (4 June 2016)