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歷 史上任何大帝國的敗亡和解體都一定有後遺症。一次大戰前後奧斯曼帝國的頹敗與滅亡，直接造成今天的中東問題與巴爾幹問題，還間接導致了現在的高加索問題。 今天高加索問題的基本原因當然是沙皇俄羅斯帝國的解體；外高加索於1918年分裂為類似民族國家的喬治亞、亞美尼亞、阿塞拜然三個共和國就是最直接的結 果。但沒有幾年，它們又都在蘇維埃邦聯的名義下重受莫斯科的管轄。 喬治亞與歐洲 1991年六月，我參加女兒從哈佛大學畢業的典禮。當天獲頒授榮譽博士並應邀發表演說的是蘇聯外交部長謝瓦納茲（Shevardnadze）。這位曾任克 格勃（KGB）將軍，喬治亞共產黨第一書記的蘇共政治委員受到台下美國菁英的熱烈鼓掌。但就當他在美國接受喝采時，他的家鄉已經在一位長期持政治異見者， 英國文學教授的領導下宣布脫離蘇聯而獨立。 獨立後的喬治亞立即陷入混亂與內戰。那位富民族主義激情的教授總統動兵鎮壓阿布哈茲自治州的獨立傾向，卻因不善統治國家而被迫逃亡到俄羅斯聯邦的車臣共和 國。1992年，因蘇聯解體而失業的謝瓦納茲則被家鄉父老推選為喬治亞的新元首。但這位富於行政經驗的新總統不但無法阻止內戰的延續，還經歷了十九次對他 行刺的圖謀！最後他並未死於非命，而是被他一手提拔的受美國教育的年輕人薩卡什維利（Saakashvili）在2003年率眾手持玫瑰花衝進政府大廈， 將他轟了出來。這就是著名的「玫瑰革命」。 喬治亞當今的領導者和菁英階層很想儘快加入〈北大西洋公約〉，以便像以色列那樣，成為位於亞洲的「歐洲國家」。弔詭的是，喬治亞自十九世紀起就想依附俄羅 斯進入歐洲，從而擺脫落後的奧斯曼帝國和伊朗；到了二十一世紀它仍然只能在歐洲的外面盼望，一點也不比土耳其離歐洲更近。這說明，地理環境對歷史的發展確 實有莫大的影響。別說喬治亞很難離開它所身處的中東，就連在它西面，宣布「脫亞入歐」已經一百年的土耳其也離不開中東。 近日來喬治亞與俄羅斯因南奧塞梯亞的衝突而斷交。但是喬治亞這個只有五百多萬人口的小國的問題，遠不只俄羅斯這個強大的前宗主國。 當前喬治亞貧富非常懸殊，官員貪汙濫權的現象很普遍，內部凝聚力很低。首先，在它領土內已有南奧塞梯亞、阿布哈茲以及最近新聞中較少提到的阿札拉等幾個已 然實際上獨立的自治州。首都附近有二十五萬從阿布哈茲被驅趕出來的喬治亞族難民。此外，在它與兩個鄰國的邊境附近，還分別有約三十萬亞美尼亞人和三十萬阿 塞拜然人。 這些對建設以喬治亞民族為主的喬治亞國是很大的阻力。尤有甚者，民族團結也並不是一般喬治亞族人的中心思想。正像世界許多其他未經現代洗禮的地區一樣，一 般喬治亞人只以家族和家族所在的小地區為效忠對象，對國家並沒有特殊的認同感。比如說，史達林的故鄉葛利（Gori）的大部分居民仍以這位同鄉為榮，並自 願為他守護設在城中的史達林紀念館。 阿塞拜然與石油 雖然喬治亞不可能成為以單一民族為主的國家，但是亞美尼亞和阿塞拜然卻在蘇聯解體後經過戰爭和民族清洗，大致成了單一民族的國家。 在阿塞拜然政府能有效控制的領土上占人口90%以上的主體民族，是信仰什葉派伊斯蘭的阿塞拜然人。他們與相鄰的伊朗北部兩省的居民同種同文同宗教，而伊朗 境內的阿塞拜然人口遠比阿塞拜然共和國要多。這對民族國家的模型是另一種挑戰。目前，阿塞拜然的領土被分為不相連的東西兩片，而東面的那一片主要領土又有 六分之一左右（這片領土上的居民目前已幾乎全是亞美尼亞人）被亞美尼亞實際占領並視為獨立。 歷史上，阿塞拜然先後被波斯與俄羅斯統治過。二十世紀初，阿塞拜然發現石油，吸引了歐美國家不少投資；歐洲財閥羅斯柴爾德（Rothschild）家族就 曾在此擁有許多資產。一次大戰前，它的石油產量占全世界的一半。近年來，正是因為阿塞拜然的石油儲量很大（據統計可能超過伊朗），國際能源公司大批進軍它 的首都巴庫（Baku），使那裡呈現一副繁榮景象。 阿塞拜然獨立後的先後兩任總統是阿力耶夫（Aliyev）父子。父親當初做過阿塞拜然共產黨總書記，獨立前是蘇共政治局委員。他們父子的外交政策是 親近土耳其（兩國語言很接近），拉攏喬治亞，力抗亞美尼亞，但與美、蘇則儘量保持等距離。先前報章報導的從裡海到地中海的那條石油管道，就是在老阿力耶夫 手上完成的。 儘管阿塞拜然的人均所得近年來迅速提高，但是人民素質、社會風氣卻沒有多少進步。整體來說，它的社會比喬治亞和亞美尼亞要落後一截。 亞美尼亞與大屠殺 亞美尼亞人歷史上曾經很輝煌，最強盛時的領土比現在要大得多。奧斯曼帝國時代的許多知識菁英與商人都是亞美尼亞人。十九世紀上半葉，同樣信奉基督教的希臘 在英、法協助之下獲得獨立，這就使許多亞美尼亞人想自己也在沙俄的庇護之下從奧斯曼帝國獨立。一次大戰前俄國與奧斯曼帝國幾次衝突，奧斯曼人把亞美尼亞人 居住的大片領土都割給了俄國。一次大戰時，許多亞美尼亞人支持俄國，因此遭到土耳其人（即信奉伊斯蘭、操土耳其語的奧斯曼人）的報復。亞美尼亞人在各地被 大量屠殺以及被驅趕到敘利亞（當時仍屬奧斯曼帝國）的沙漠中。雖然土耳其官方至今不承認，亞美尼亞人以及他們在歐美的支持者說這一大屠殺死難人數超過一百 萬。 亞美尼亞的確是一個苦難深重的民族。從中世紀以來他們就以長於學識和善於經商知名，與歐洲的猶太人頗有相似之處。在阿拉伯人、波斯人、奧斯曼人和俄羅斯人的統治下，他們幾次大規模逃散以保性命。 現在生活在北美、西歐、中東以及俄羅斯的亞美尼亞人數目非常多，政治、經濟影響力也很強。1991年亞美尼亞獨立後，它海外的僑民十分支持政府收復在蘇聯 時代被判給阿塞拜然的「失土」納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫（Nagorno-Karabakh）。這就釀成了亞、阿兩國在獨立後的戰爭與兩族人民大量的死傷與逃離 家園。這場戰爭的時間恰巧與巴爾幹半島上波士尼亞人和科索沃人遭塞爾維亞人「清洗」的時間相同，所以幾乎沒有受到西方傳媒的注意。 南（外）高加索的困境 我的亞美尼亞朋友告訴我，亞美尼亞人根據過去當鄰居和同學、同事的經驗，比較願意和阿塞拜然人做朋友，不喜歡「自大」的喬治亞人。 據說一般喬治亞人也情願和阿塞拜然人交往而不喜歡「狡猾」的亞美尼亞人。 不論誰喜歡誰，南高加索三國就是這樣矛盾重重，危機處處。在這背後，有上千年的歷史恩怨，也有當今國際政治的現實利益。今天住在高加索地區的任何一個民族的任何一項領土主張或對另一個民族的指控，都能找到歷史的支持。 所有高加索人都有歷史的包袱，而誰都沒有經歷過現代化的洗禮。極端主義，貪汙瀆職，有家無國的現象十分普遍，絕不限於某一個民族或國家。 毫無疑問，南高加索三國都在轉變中。其實無論是社會主義還是資本主義，民主政體還是專制政體，都需要在一定的社會和文化傳統中實行。西方國家所實行的民主 政體和它們近年來所推行的公民社會，在目前的高加索地區還找不到合適的土壤。西方國家從前所奉行的民族主義和民族國家的概念，卻在這個古老的民族博物館裡 得到了強烈的共鳴。 即使沒有大國之間地緣政治的較量，高加索地區也很難在短期內安定下來，民主起來，繁榮開來。目前，美國、西歐和俄國為了南高加索地區而進入「新冷戰」。但是不要忘記，真正的利益攸關者還包括土耳其和伊朗這兩個地區大國。 |
2008年10月31日 星期五
南高加索 亞美尼亞 阿塞拜然 喬治亞 ╱張信剛
2008年10月27日 星期一
Dalai Lama signals strategy shift with China
 | 达赖喇嘛发出信号，“中间道路”或被放弃 | | ||
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|  | | 在周日传出达赖喇嘛可能会放弃温和路线的信号后， [更多] | |
Dalai Lama signals strategy shift with China
DHARAMSHALA, India (AFP) — The Dalai Lama has opened the door to a tougher China policy following a complete lack of progress in talks on Tibetan autonomy with Beijing, aides and exiled Tibetan leaders said Monday.
The future course of the Tibetan movement, including the possibility of an historic switch from demanding autonomy to a demand for full independence, will be the focus of a special meeting next month of around 300 delegates representing the worldwide exiled Tibetan community.
"The only non-negotiable aspect is that the movement will still be non-violent. Everyone is agreed on that," the Dalai Lama's spokesman Tenzin Taklha told AFP.
In his first public address since undergoing surgery for gallstones, the Dalai Lama said at the weekend that he had given up on extracting any concessions from Beijing after seven rounds of talks between Tibetan envoys and Chinese officials.
"He's lost hope in trying to reach a solution with the present Chinese leadership which is simply not willing to address the issues," Taklha said.
"His Holiness feels that other options have to be considered, and this will be done at the meeting in November," he said.
The Dalai Lama has long championed a "middle path" policy with China which espouses "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet, rather than the full independence that many younger, more radical activists demand.
November's meeting in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala -- the seat of the Tibetan government in exile -- constitutes the gathering of the exiled Tibetan community's main consultative body.
The meeting can adopt non-binding proposals that would still require the approval of the exiled government in order to become official policy.
Samdhong Rinpoche, the government's current prime minister, acknowledged that there was "growing frustration" with the lack of progress in talks with Beijing, and said the possibility of shifting policy towards full independence was sure to be discussed.
"I think people will raise this question. No one can stop it," he told AFP.
Rinpoche said whatever the outcome of the meeting, the movement would remain non-violent.
"We cannot compromise on that," Rinpoche said. "A shift from non-violence is absolutely impossible as long as His Holiness is leader"
Calls for the Dalai Lama to take a harder line with Beijing have grown in the wake of a heavy Chinese crackdown in Tibet that followed violent protests against Chinese rule across the region in March.
Exiles such as Tsewang Rigzin, president of the pro-independence Tibetan Youth Congress, believe the repression of Tibetans in their homeland has now reached a level that demands a change in strategy.
"We are at a crossroads," Rigzin said.
"We are not saying that the (middle path) policy is bad, but it's one where China's decision is a major factor and that's why it hasn't been successful," he said.
"We still believe independence is the only solution and we would want to present (in November) a proposal based on our stand of independence."
Tibetan envoys have held seven rounds of talks with Chinese officials and an eighth is scheduled for later this week.
"Whatever happens we have to keep the door to dialogue open," said Taklha, who firmly rejected reports that the 73-year-old Dalai Lama was going into retirement.
The Tibetan leader has been hospitalised twice in the past few months, but his aides say he has now fully recovered.
The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India in 1959 following a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule.
The Chinese government have labelled him a traitor, intent on fomenting violent unrest in Tibet with the ambition of achieving full independence.
2008年10月26日 星期日
South Korea Second time around
South Korea
Second time around
Oct 23rd 2008 | SEOUL
From The Economist print edition
Shock, denial, anger and a massive bail-out for good measure
OF ALL the Asian countries worst ravaged by the regional financial turmoil of 1997-98, South Korea has come closest in recent weeks to seeing history repeat itself—not as farce, but as renewed financial tragedy. As its stockmarket has slid downhill and the currency, the won, has fallen by nearly 30% this year, the government has been telling all-comers that the economy is sound and the banks liquid and solvent. Its officials have blamed their troubles on the ignorant or malicious refusal of foreign analysts to believe them.
Yet on October 19th the government announced a $130 billion rescue for Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Of this, $100 billion is in the form of guarantees for foreign-currency debts. Another $30 billion—about one-eighth of the country’s foreign-exchange reserves—was to be available to banks suffering a drought of dollars. It followed this up two days later with a promise to spend 12 trillion won ($9.2 billion) to help the building industry—for example by refinancing debts and buying unsold houses. The president, Lee Myung-bak, described the overall economic situations as “more serious” than in 1997, because of the global sweep of the crisis. The government had already appealed to the grass-roots patriotism that helped South Korea through the late 1990s: cutting back on energy bills; buying local products; and surrendering any dollars left over from overseas jaunts.
South Korea
Second time around
Oct 23rd 2008 | SEOUL
From The Economist print edition
Shock, denial, anger and a massive bail-out for good measure
OF ALL the Asian countries worst ravaged by the regional financial turmoil of 1997-98, South Korea has come closest in recent weeks to seeing history repeat itself—not as farce, but as renewed financial tragedy. As its stockmarket has slid downhill and the currency, the won, has fallen by nearly 30% this year, the government has been telling all-comers that the economy is sound and the banks liquid and solvent. Its officials have blamed their troubles on the ignorant or malicious refusal of foreign analysts to believe them.
Yet on October 19th the government announced a $130 billion rescue for Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Of this, $100 billion is in the form of guarantees for foreign-currency debts. Another $30 billion—about one-eighth of the country’s foreign-exchange reserves—was to be available to banks suffering a drought of dollars. It followed this up two days later with a promise to spend 12 trillion won ($9.2 billion) to help the building industry—for example by refinancing debts and buying unsold houses. The president, Lee Myung-bak, described the overall economic situations as “more serious” than in 1997, because of the global sweep of the crisis. The government had already appealed to the grass-roots patriotism that helped South Korea through the late 1990s: cutting back on energy bills; buying local products; and surrendering any dollars left over from overseas jaunts.
2008年10月25日 星期六
數十萬人 "反黑心，顧台灣"遊行 。北京奧運的新聞中心辦公室已經淪為公廁
剪貼 重排bbc
發起遊行的民進黨主席蔡英文說，等中國大陸海協會會長陳雲林訪台時，民進黨還將會號召民眾走上街頭"嗆"陳雲林。
台灣在野黨舉辦數大規模群眾示威，數十萬群眾在這項名為"反黑心，顧台灣"的遊行中，抗議總統馬英九的一系列兩岸政策，以及中國黑心商品。
群眾午後1400在台北市各地兵分五路向總統府方向遊行，警方動用五千名警力維安。民進黨文宣部表示，五路遊行隊伍共有六十萬群眾參加。
這五路遊行群眾各自代表：反黑心商品，反一中教育，反淘空主權，反一中市場，以反無能政府，群眾舉著各式標語並表演行動劇，以踩扁"五星學士帽"來象徵反對馬政府開放承認中國大陸學歷。一群主要以年輕人為主的示威民眾說，目前台灣就業市場已經很嚴峻，馬政府又開放大陸學歷，將會排擠他們的工作機會。
五路示威者在總統府前集結後高喊"台灣中國，一邊一國"的口號，他們並要求行政院長劉兆玄與總統馬英九下台。
在台上的演說者批評馬英九政府在毒奶粉事件的表現，唯中國馬首是瞻﹔他們並批判馬英九在主權上自我矮化，把台灣從國家降格為地區。
民進黨主席蔡英文質問馬英九是否與中國達成秘密協議，把台灣主權當成可以談判的商品讓渡出去﹔她並質問在面對中國壓力武力威脅時，總統有什麼具體辦法保障國家安全。
雖然遊行活動大致和平理性，但其間也發生一段插曲：一名女警在維安時與群眾口角衝突，並宣稱自己是"中華人民共和國"警察，警政署則迅速就該起事件向民眾道歉。
針對即將到訪的中國海協會會長陳雲林，遊行活動上也有一些群眾高喊不歡迎的口號。
蔡英文說民進黨反對陳雲林到台，是因為台灣必須為經濟議題必須付出很多政治代價與主權代價，今天群眾走上街頭是為了留給子孫獨立的狀態，給他們有選擇未來的權利。
此前與群眾激烈抗議海協會副會長張銘清，並因張銘清倒地事件被檢察官傳訊的台南市議員王定宇，也參加今天的遊行並受到民眾歡呼。
陳雲林預計將在11月3日到訪，民進黨計劃在他到訪期間，持續進行群眾示威活動，但國民黨方面已先行申請台北市多處路段集會遊行權，進行技術性地阻擋。
民進黨說陳雲林到台時一定會大聲告訴他不歡迎，並批評國民黨搶借路權是想壓制人民抗議的言論自由，若屆時發生衝突國民黨要負責。
60萬人怒吼 嗆馬無能 |
| 「一○二五大遊行」主辦單位昨晚在凱道廣場舉辦晚會，當「無能」兩字的雷射光打在總統府上時，群眾大聲歡呼並共同高喊：「馬政府無能，下台！」。（記者王藝菘攝） |
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| 民進黨昨天主辦「一○二五反黑心、顧台灣大遊行」，五路大隊在台北街頭開步走，傍晚會師總統府前凱達格蘭大道，不但塞爆凱道廣場，擠不進現場的群眾，更延伸到附近數條街頭。（記者方賓照攝） |
〔記者李欣芳、彭顯鈞／台北報導〕六十萬台灣人民昨天走上街頭，參加「一○二五反黑心、顧台灣大遊行」，五路大隊昨天下午在台北街頭開步走，手持各式自製道具和標語，共同向馬政府及中國嗆聲怒吼。
五路大軍齊行 人龍長又密
這 場由民進黨發起、本土社團響應的大遊行，由於馬政府上台後，施政無能、政策傾中、百業蕭條、失業攀高，各行各業人民鬱卒不滿情緒累積太多太大，群眾自發性 參與十分熱烈，大遊行的五路大軍，宛如五條又長又密的人龍，在台北市區挺進，當傍晚五路會師凱達格蘭大道時，不但塞爆總統府前凱道廣場，擠不進晚會現場的 群眾，更延伸到附近數條街頭。主辦單位宣布，昨參與遊行的人數破六十萬人。
陳雲林來台時 相約再上街
民進黨主席蔡英文在晚會上演說時，強烈批判馬政府，並向馬英九總統下戰書，要求就台灣主權議題進行公開辯論。蔡英文還和群眾相約，中國海協會會長陳雲林來台期間，大家街頭再相聚。主持人、立委陳亭妃進一步宣布，十一月三日、四日，大家在台北火車站見，向陳雲林嗆聲！
前 民進黨主席姚嘉文、蘇貞昌、游錫堃、台聯黨主席黃昆輝昨天均參與活動。這場由民進黨結合台聯、本土社團舉辦的大遊行，昨天下午二時起集結，三時分別由北市 東區頂好商圈、台大校門口、龍山寺、中山足球場與三重中興橋頭五路出發，一路上秩序平和，充分配合蔡英文「有秩序才有力量」的訴求，以和平理性群眾運動展 現政治力量。
陳水扁前總統昨也參與遊行，從東區頂好商圈出發，走到景福門附近，隨即登上宣傳車向參與民眾致意後就離開，並未發表談話，充分配合民進黨不談個人議題的訴求。
群眾喊馬下台 熱到最高點
主辦單位昨晚將「無能」兩字雷射光打在總統府的建築物上，群眾歡呼並高喊：「馬政府無能，下台！」宏大的聲音響徹雲霄，將晚會氣氛熱到最高點。最後在燭光祈福與歌聲中，長達八小時的一○二五大遊行及凱道晚會在晚間十時落幕，仍有不少人不願散去。
放大圖片
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【綜 合報導】昨是台灣光復節，為抗議馬英九總統上台至今景氣低迷、中國黑心貨橫行，民進黨特別選定昨天在台北市舉辦「反黑心、顧台灣」大遊行，下午兵分五路出 發，最後會師總統府前凱達格蘭大道。來自各地的民眾將各路線擠得水洩不通，「馬英九下台！」怒吼不絕於耳，主辦單位宣稱參與人數高達60萬人。
反黑心顧台灣大遊行專版
民進黨主席蔡英文在晚上10時活動結束時預告，如果中國海協會會長陳雲林真的在11月3日來台，「那時大家再見。」
昨 遊行過程大致平和，不過晚上發生一名男子疑似自焚或縱火事件。昨晚8時許，在凱道主舞台右側，王文炳（54歲）手持裝汽油的寶特瓶，突然衝向一部發電機拋 出瓶子，他的下半身和發電機立即著火。目擊者說，渾身酒味的王文炳拋出瓶子前下半身已著火，似乎想要以汽油彈丟擲發電機，不慎燒到自己；也有人指出，王疑 似要自焚，先用打火機點燃寶特瓶與身上衣物，因疼痛掙扎，著火的寶特瓶才波及發電機。
人數比上次多一倍
民眾看到王文炳遭烈焰灼身，嚇得厲聲尖叫，趕緊猛倒水澆淋王文炳，並拿旗幟奮力撲打發電機。王隨即被送往台大醫院急救，全身有20%至30%二度灼傷，無 生命危險。他向警方表示是發電機突然起火燒到他，後又改口是要丟菸蒂，看到身旁有寶特瓶，隨手拿來熄菸，不料燒到自己。警方對他的說法存疑，正深入調查。
馬 總統執政百日時台灣社主辦830嗆馬大遊行，主辦單位宣稱30萬人參加，在馬執政5個多月的昨天，出現加倍人潮，民進黨宣稱有60萬人，警方估計是20萬 人。昨下午3時開始的遊行秩序大致良好，前總統陳水扁參加「反黑心商品大隊」從北市頂好商圈出發，他登上宣傳車向支持者致意，隨後與民眾一起遊行，所到之 處民眾高呼「阿扁加油！」扁沿路揮手回應，走到景福門即一路握手離去，沒有發言。
人民怒吼：活不下去
蔡英文率領「反一中教育大隊」從台灣大學大門口出發，「反掏空主權大隊」從艋舺公園出發，「反無能政府大隊」從北縣三重中興橋頭出發，「反一中市場大隊」從中山足球場出發，各路都是洶湧人潮。
遊行隊伍高舉標語與布條呼口號，「馬統毒奶，親中賣台」、「黑心商品馬英九下架」、「馬英九下台！劉兆玄下台！共匪滾蛋！」、「陳雲林滾蛋」、「中國賠償」等怒吼此起彼落。
不少人全家大小走上街頭，一群媽媽推著嬰兒車參加遊行，許多父母說：「中國黑心食品一直來，政府卻不能有效控管，要帶孩子來捍衛自己的未來。」 民眾王俊傑說：「請馬總統到南部去看看，有多少工廠關門，多少人失業，基層人民幾乎快活不下去了！」
遊行隊伍會師後，下午5時45分，民進黨黨公職全員到齊，展現團結氣勢；入夜後，主辦單位把「無能」、「黑心」四字以雷射光打在總統府正中央，現場氣氛high到最高點。晚會10時準時結束，但仍有二、三百名群眾不願離去，繼續嗆聲、喊口號。
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放大圖片 ：絕對不出賣台灣
馬總統昨下午在新竹市南寮漁港與漁民座談時保證，「我絕對不會出賣台灣」，「我馬英九當總統，所有的事情都是以台灣為主、對人民有利。」面對媒體追問中國 毒奶事件會否向中國求償？他說：「會啊！」他並特別提醒，10月25日「是我們台灣做主人的日子，所以不要忘本，吃果子拜樹頭。」總統府晚間發聲明稿，指 馬總統對行政院長劉兆玄的表現高度肯定，深信在劉領導下一定可戰勝逆境。
針 對這次遊行，世新大學新聞系教授彭懷恩表示，馬政府行政體系確有問題，但上街人數多對國民黨未來和陳雲林交手反而有利，國民黨反而可向中國多要些東西。中 研院近代史研究所副研究員陳儀深說，馬英九對中政策在選前選後，變化速度跟幅度太大，加上處理毒奶的民生大事太一廂情願，若中國真能道歉賠償，民眾還可抒 發怨氣，若做不到，內閣改組是危機處理唯一方法。
1025遊行小數據
．參與人數：主辦單位宣稱60萬人，台北市警局估算20萬人
．維安警力：5406人
．抗議布條：10萬條
．動員遊覽車：1021輛
．活動花費：主辦單位稱約250萬元
．活動時間：7小時
資料來源：民進黨、台北市警局
***** 德國之聲
“我相信中國乳製品質量，也非常喜歡喝中國的酸奶。”歐盟委員會貿易委員彼得•曼德爾森在中國痛飲酸奶一炮而紅，連中國國家總理溫家寶也“為之感動”。不過就在曼德爾森“喝奶”之後10天，他就因為腎結石發作而不得不接受了手術，當天恰好是其擔任英國商務大臣的第一天。那麼，中國人是如何看待“曼德爾森喝奶”事件的呢？德國之聲記者摘編如下
……
在英語和德語的穀歌新聞中，可以輕易檢索到曼德爾森動手術的相關新聞，不過卻沒有太多關於其在中國喝奶的報導。
*****
香港《東方日報》透露，北京奧運的新聞中心辦公室已經淪為公廁。報導寫道："作為北京奧運主場館所在的北京奧林匹克公園，在奧運結束後，周邊為奧運搭建的 臨時房屋卻頓成棄宅，甚至變'垃圾崗'。其中奧運主新聞中心媒體酒店訪客卡辦公室現時已有如'公共廁所'，惡臭襲人、垃圾滿地，連屋內的金屬物都被小偷強 行拆走，媒體註冊中心等二十多處地方的情況也類似。奧運主新聞中心媒體酒店訪客卡辦公室的大門招牌雖然還和奧運期間一樣，但內已大不相同，一股濃烈的惡臭 味令人透不過氣來，滿地的碎磚、食品袋、爛紙、煙頭等雜物之間，還夾雜一片片半濕的尿漬，角落都是排泄物，而各個房間牆上的金屬卡扣、接線盒等物件被拆得 亂七八糟。"
India, Japan in security pact
India, Japan in security pact; a new architecture for Asia?
This was a security cooperation agreement under which India and Japan, once on opposite sides of the Cold War, will hold military exercises, police the Indian Ocean and conduct military-to-military exchanges on fighting terrorism.
It doesn’t sound very grand, but its significance lies in the fact that pacifist Japan has such a security pact with only two other countries - the United States and Australia.
And it comes in the same month that India and the United States closed a nuclear cooperation deal that won New Delhi a place on the world’s nuclear high table, ending three decades of isolation following its first nuclear tests in 1974.
And finally if you remember that India, the United States, Japan , Australia and Singapore held naval exercises last year off the Arabian Sea, you begin to see the outlines of a new security architecture for Asia, which according to some has the containment of China written all over it.
Call it what you will - a league of democracies perhaps - but the idea of some of the most powerful navies in Asian seas exercising together points to a dramatic shift of alliances, one that would have raised an eyebrow not just in Beijing and Islamabad, but other regional capitals such as Jakarta and Bangkok.
A January 2008 report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service on the emerging security architecture in Asia involving India, the United States, Japan and Australia refers to the opportunities inherent in such a partnership but also to the limits of it as well as concern among those nations kept out of it. A PDF of the report is available here.
Singh and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso were at pains to stress their security pact wasn’t aimed at anyone, least of all China. “We regard security cooperation with India as very important … and we do not have any assumption of a third country as a target such as China, Aso said.
Singh was even more direct, saying India’s security and economic cooperation with Japan would not be at the “cost of any third country, least of all China”.
Indeed, there is plenty that binds both countries to China. Trade between India and China, as Singh told his hosts, had grown in the past year by an amount greater than the whole trade with Japan.
And then Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, hasn’t yet fully overcome its sense of outrage over the Indian nuclear tests in 1998, which triggered nuclear tests by Pakistan.
An India-Japan nuclear cooperation deal, along the lines agreed with the United States, seems some distance away, given lingering reservations in Japan. Tokyo, as the The Mainichi commented, must continue to urge New Delhi to fully renounce nuclear testing.
So where does this all leave China and “all weather ally” Pakistan ? Should they be worrying about this new concert of democracies on their doorstep or is it just one more element in a fast-changing world that is getting harder to predict?
2008年10月21日 星期二
China factory closure leaves workers asking: now what?
China factory closure leaves workers asking: now what?
By John Ruwitch
DONGGUAN, China (Reuters) - Like tens of millions of young Chinese before her, Yu Juan left China's hinterland for factory work near the coast four years ago with the dream of getting rich.
An acquaintance from her hometown of Dazhou in Sichuan province told her about an exporter in Dongguan, an hour-and-a-half north of Hong Kong, that was hiring.
The Hejun Toy Factory was large, Hong Kong-owned and paid well and on time. It also had an imprimatur that Yu and others working there thought was a virtual guarantee of job security: a stock code.
"At that time, we considered this company good because it was listed on a stock exchange," she said.
Last week, however, Hejun's owner, Smart Union Group, closed the factory gates, suspended its shares and said provisional liquidators had been appointed.
Smart Union had tried to beat tough export conditions by committing more as smaller factories closed, local media said. It over-extended even as demand worsened, thanks to the global credit crisis which could drag rich consuming countries in the west into recession. It also suffered a costly flood this summer.
Some workers saw Smart Union's fate as a sign that things in industry had gone from bad to worse.
Exporters in the once-booming southern province of Guangdong and other industrial hubs have suffered in recent years from rising labor and input costs, a stronger Chinese currency, fewer tax breaks and more stringent testing standards.
Now, credit is constricting as the U.S. crisis spreads. Factories across southern China survive on a precarious diet of loans as they compete for foreign orders with wafer-thin margins.
Yu and about 7,000 other workers were told they would not be paid and as hundreds took to the streets to protest, many wondered: If such a seemingly well-founded company could fail, who was safe in this environment?
"It's scary," said engineer Zeng Yangwen, 26, who had worked at the toy maker for three years. "The companies that folded before were small. This is the first big one to go under."
FINANCIAL TSUNAMI
The Federation of Hong Kong Industries sent survey questionnaires to members last week to try to gauge the scope and depth of the trouble.
"Due to the global financial tsunami, local banks in Hong Kong have tightened their credit facilities to Hong Kong companies. Most SMEs are hard hit and have encountered liquidity problems," it said.
Hong Kong businesses have helped underpin Guangdong's robust economy, which in turn has been a key driver of China's double-digit growth. Less credit and lower orders will almost certainly translate into more factory closures and layoffs.
"How many exporters are not in trouble? Very few," said economist Andy Xie.
Another Hong Kong-listed company, home appliance maker BEP International Holdings Limited, said it would shut its factory in Shenzhen on Monday, laying off its 1,500 workers, China's official Xinhua news agency reported.
What the factory closures means for the migrant workers, like Yu, Zeng and their colleagues, who occupy shop floors around the country, it is not immediately clear.
Factory bosses in the Pearl River Delta have complained in recent years that finding and keeping workers, especially those with advanced skills, has been difficult. That suggests that there may be a cushion for the Hejun workers and those from other factories that go belly up who want to keep working in the area.
Some of Yu's colleagues were not overly concerned about finding new jobs, but others said the market was already bad and bound to get worse.
Li Heping, 33, and his wife Gao Xiangrong, 32, said they would take advantage of the new-found freedom of being unemployed to visit their 12-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son back in their home village in Sichuan province for the first time in two years. Then they would return to Guangdong.
"We will probably come back here before the Lunar New Year to try and get a job. It is going to be tough but we have no other choice," said Li.
Zeng, the engineer, said he would stay in Dongguan if he could find work. If not, he would go home to nearby Jiangxi province.
Another worker, Wu Xiaohong, 34, had a similar plan.
"Average pay, no frills, that's what I want," she said.
How would she try to make sure her next employer didn't implode?It's all luck," she said.
Outside Hejun, headhunters from other factories handed out flyers and posted notices seeking employees.
"They benefit, we benefit," said one woman from a nearby electronics factory sticking a want-ad to a wall outside the Hejun facility.
But what assurances could she give prospective employees that the job was secure?
"In this environment, who can guarantee anything?" said the women.
(Additional reporting by Royston Chan; Editing by Valerie Lee)
2008年10月19日 星期日
司法部门威胁律师－在中国当律师越来越难
德语媒体 | 2008.10.19
司法部门威胁律师－在中国当律师越来越难
中国的律师在从事自己职业的过程中受到当局越来越大的压力。焦点周刊从律师代理毒奶粉事件受害者权益时遇到的麻烦谈到了中国毫无法制可言的现状。德国之声摘译如下。
焦点周刊写道："直接下达的指令干脆明确。司法部门的官员给河南省的律师们打电话，威胁说，如果继续做这件事，有你们好看的。这些律师是一 百二十名免费为全国奶粉丑闻受害者提供法律援助的小组成员。几天前，律师事务所的常律师对西方媒体透露，'他们说，这件事成了政治事件，我必须服从政府指 示'。现在，这位律师已不敢公开表态，他恐惧地对焦点周刊说，'您最好给其它律师打电话'。
北京德恒律师事务所的纪成律师为受害者向奶粉生产厂家三鹿公司提出了索赔控告，现在该事务所突然说，'我们不认识这个人'。若干律师现在宣布收回原告的动议，不再代理因食用污染奶粉患病儿童的法律事务。"
"每当中国的律师出面反抗权力无所不在的当局有关部门时，尤其在涉及高级干部或穿制服、戴大盖帽人员的利益时，他们就象全身被捆绑着做斗争。在此过 程中，法律的代言人甚至成为被告的事例并不少见。例如为一名因腐败罪被判刑的官员做辩护的律师，一年多以后，自己锒铛入狱，并且失去了律师资格。
"国家安全局等部门一再拒绝律师浏览重要的文字材料，不让他们会见当事人，并且不说明理由。盲人异议人士陈光诚揭发了山东强制堕胎的问题后，被判处 四年监禁，罪名是所谓的阻碍交通和破坏公物。提出上诉后，他的辩护人在合议庭审讯前得不到有关证人的信息，法庭随即确认了判决。"
焦点周刊接着写道，由于社会冲突不断增多，"共产党的国家政权对待民权辩护律师尤为无情。"44岁的律师高智晟就是其中一员，"2005年，他退出 共产党并发表公开信，谴责共产党对人民使用暴力。以后，他失去了律师资格，2006年被判关押三年。"对此，焦点周刊援引纽约大学法学教授科恩数十年来观 察中国法律状况得出的结论写道：
"他认为，2003年以来，中国在走向法制的道路上处于'停顿'状态。法律条文并不错，但就象在中国常见的那样，一贯彻就走了样，政界并没有真正实行司法独立的愿望。
"律师李方平说，'在中国，共产党领导一切，从中央到下面区县，每一级都有政法委员会，监督司法系统'。由于他为批评政府的胡佳做辩护，警察一度把 他软禁在家中，形影不离地跟踪他，长达数天之久。尽管政府发出了警告，这位34岁的律师仍然是牛奶丑闻受害家庭的律师小组成员，愿意为他们提供帮助。"
本文摘自或节译自其它媒体
不代表德国之声观点
2008年10月14日 星期二
Korean Star’s Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation
Korean Star’s Suicide Reignites Debate on Web Regulation
SEOUL — Choi Jin-sil, a movie star, was the closest thing South Korea had to a national sweetheart.
Choi Jin-sil, an actress, was the subject of online attacks.
So when Ms. Choi, 39, was found dead in her apartment on Oct. 2 in what the police concluded was a suicide, her grief-stricken homeland sought an answer to why the actress had chosen to end her life.
The police, the media and members of Parliament immediately pointed fingers at the Internet. Malicious online rumors led to Ms. Choi’s suicide, the police said, after studying memos found at her home and interviewing friends and relatives.
Those online accusations claimed that Ms. Choi, who once won a government medal for her savings habits, was a loan shark. They asserted that a fellow actor, Ahn Jae-hwan, was driven to suicide because Ms. Choi had relentlessly pressed him to repay a $2 million debt.
Public outrage over Ms. Choi’s suicide gave ammunition to the government of President Lee Myung-bak, which has long sought to regulate cyberspace, a major avenue for antigovernment protests in South Korea.
Earlier this year, the Lee government was reeling after weeks of protests against beef imports from the United States. Vicious antigovernment postings and online rumors on the dangers of lifting the ban on American beef fueled the political upheaval, which forced the entire cabinet to resign.
In a monthlong crackdown on online defamation, 900 agents from the government’s Cyber Terror Response Center are scouring blogs and online discussion boards to identify and arrest those who “habitually post slander and instigate cyber bullying.”
Hong Joon-pyo, floor leader of the governing Grand National Party, commented, “Internet space in our country has become the wall of a public toilet.”
In the National Assembly, Ms. Choi’s suicide set the country’s rival parties on a collision course over how to regulate the Web. The governing party is promoting a law to punish online insults; the opposition parties accuse the government of trying to “rule cyberspace with martial law.”
The opposition says that cyberspace violence is already dealt with under existing laws against slander and public insults. But the government says that a tougher, separate law is necessary to punish online abuse, which inflicts quicker and wider damage on victims.
To battle online harassment, the government’s Communications Commission last year ordered Web portals with more than 300,000 visitors a day to require its users to submit their names and matching Social Security numbers before posting comments.
The police reported 10,028 cases of online libel last year, up from 3,667 reported in 2004.
Harassment in cyberspace has been blamed for a string of highly publicized suicides. Ms. Choi made headlines when she married a baseball player, Cho Sung Min, in 2000. But tabloids and Web bloggers were relentless in criticizing her when the marriage soured and she fought for custody of her two children.
TV producers and commercial sponsors dropped her. The general sentiment was that her career was over.
But in 2005, she made a comeback with a hugely popular soap opera called “My Rosy Life.” In it, she dropped her cute-girl image and played a jilted wife who throws a kick at her errant husband, but reconciles with him when she learns she has terminal cancer.
This year, she broke another taboo by successfully petitioning a court to change the surname of her two children to her own.
But in an interview with MBC-TV in July, which was broadcast after her death, she said she “dreaded” the Internet, where posters had insulted her for being a single, divorced mother. The police said she had been taking antidepressants since her divorce.
In South Korea, volunteer counselors troll the Internet to discourage people from using the Web to trade tips on how to commit suicide and, in some cases, how to form suicide pacts.
“We have seen a sudden rise in copycat suicides following a celebrity death,” said Jeon Jun-hee, an official at the Seoul Metropolitan Mental Health Center, which runs a suicide prevention hot line. Mr. Jeon said the hot line had received 60 calls a day, or twice the usual number, since Ms. Choi’s suicide.
2008年10月12日 星期日
Is South Korea Asia's Iceland?
韓國是亞洲的冰島嗎？
雖然沒人認為亞洲會再遭遇一場金融危機，但冰島的巨額經常項目逆差和銀行體系危機可能會讓人猜想哪個實行開放式金融市場的國家會有同樣的遭遇。如果真有這樣的亞洲國家，那韓國或許會排在首位。該國在1997年金融危機中令外國投資者損失慘重。
韓國的經常項目逆差是亞洲國家中最高的，其銀行的貸存比率在亞洲國家中也最高，達到136%，大大高於亞洲82%的平均水平。亞洲貸存比率排名第二的印度尼西亞為95%。
投資者無疑正在匆忙逃離韓國市場。該國主要股指韓國綜合指數已較高點水平回落了35%，韓圓兌美元匯率也跌至10年低點。
但韓國也具備一些有利條件。韓圓疲軟會降低韓國產品在國外的售價，從而有助於提振該國出口。
而 大宗商品價格走低也給韓國帶來了一線希望。高盛(Goldman Sachs)認為，如果今年剩余時間油價能保持在每桶85美元左右，那麼韓國很有可能在今年第四季度實現經常項目順差。與大多數國家相比，大宗商品價格對 韓國經常項目狀況的影響尤為巨大，油價每下降10%，韓國的經常項目逆差就能下降0.9%左右。
而韓國銀行的狀況也要比冰島的穩定。冰島的幾家銀行突然之間就淪落到掛牌拍賣的境地，而該國第三大銀行的控制權已被冰島金融監管局(Financial Supervisory Authority)接手。
雖然首爾市場對美元的需求已導致韓國的銀行同業拆息像其他主要金融中心一樣大幅飆升，但至少該國主要幾家商業銀行的韓圓頭寸仍呈現為淨流入，並未再現1997年金融危機時的存款蒸發景象。9月份韓國銀行體系的韓圓存款額較上年同期增長了11%。
韓國央行(Bank of Korea)手中的外匯儲備也多達2,397億美元，大大高於1997年時的水平。當時韓國的銀行曾在海外市場上借入了大量短期美元資金。而這一次韓國各銀行背負的大多是長期債務。
雖然短時間內還難以搞清哪個國家或哪家銀行會在此次危機中落馬，但至少韓國還有不會淪為亞洲冰島的可能。
MARK CRANFIELD
Is South Korea Asia's Iceland?
While nobody is expecting Asian Crisis Part Two, Iceland's huge current account deficit and banking system malaise could provoke comparisons with Asian countries with open financial markets in similar circumstances. If it does, South Korea, the biggest money loser for foreigners during the 1997 financial crisis, may top the danger list.
Korea has the largest current account deficit in Asia and its banks have the worst loan-to-deposit ratios. Indeed, at 136%, the ratio of Korean bank loans to deposits is significantly above the Asian average of 82%. Next in line after Korea is Indonesia at 95%.
Investors are certainly fleeing Korea's markets in a hurry. The main Kospi index is 35% off its peak and the Korean won has hit a decade-low against the U.S. dollar.
But Korea has some wind at its back. The weak Korean won makes its products cheaper in other countries and could boost exports.
There is also hope in the form of lower commodity prices. Should oil prices remain around $85 per barrel through the rest of year, there is a good chance of Korea posting a current account surplus in the fourth quarter through December, according to Goldman Sachs. Commodity prices have a particularly large impact compared with most countries on Korea's current account position, which improves by around 0.9% for every 10% decline in oil prices.
Korean banks are also in a less precarious position than Iceland's. Several Icelandic banks been put up for sale all at once and control of the third-largest bank has passed to the Financial Supervisory Authority.
While the demand for dollar funding in Seoul has sent interbank rates skyrocketing as in other major centers, at least the major commercial banks are seeing net inflows of the local currency, unlike at the start of the Asian crisis in 1997 when deposits evaporated. Won deposits grew 11% on year in September.
The Bank of Korea is also sitting on foreign reserves of $239.7 billion, much larger reserves than it had in 1997, when its banks had borrowed significant amounts of short-term dollars in offshore markets. This time around, Korea's banks have mostly long-term debt.
There is still a long way to go before the all clear sounds for any country or bank caught up in this crisis, but at least Korea has a fighting chance of coming out ahead of Iceland.
MARK CRANFIELD
2008年10月11日 星期六
《胡温土地新政，社会危机四伏》
正在北京召开的中共十七届三中全会的焦点之一，是农村土地改革，亦即让农民获得土地的流转权。香港《东方日报》就此发表评论，题目是《胡温土地新 政，社会危机四伏》。文章说："中共十七届三中全会9日开始在北京举行，今次会议将对中国土地制度作出历史性的改革，是次会议有望在农村土地制度、公共服 务、户籍制度三方面取得较大的政策突破。其中，农村土地制度料将在家庭联产承包责任制的基础上，对多种形式流转土地承包经营、土地永包制实现新的探索，这 等于打开了土地私有化的序幕，对中国政局与经济发展将产生巨大的影响。为了今次改革，胡锦涛特意在国庆节前跑到安徽凤阳这个当年农村改革的先行点吹风。事 实上，这次改革也是当前中国政经局势发展矛盾到临界点的被迫之举。近年来，三农问题成为中共工作的重中之重，年年一号文件，但年年不见起色，农民苦、农村 穷、农业弱的现象没有得到根本的改变。最重要的是，近年随内地房地产业的发展，开发商勾结地方官吏强佔民田的现象异常突出，很多失地农民变成流民，到处游 荡，给整个社会造成极大的不稳定。正因为如此，当局才被迫走出这一步。"
文章写道："当然，今年因美国次按危机引起的金融海啸席捲全球，接下来将是全球性经济衰退，这对以出口为导向的中国加工业是个痛苦消息，很多企业将 因此倒闭，这涉及上千万中国工人，当中大部分是农民工。而通过盘活农村土地，进而拉动农村经济，增强内需，可藉此对岌岌可危的中国经济产生新的推动力。但 是这种变相土地私有化性质的改革，在国内并没有得到异口同声的讚赏，相反，很多人提出了尖锐的批评。共产党的传统左派，则视这项改革为彻底割裂了中共的立 党基础，「一改改到解放前」，「中共白白奋斗了八十多年」。"
文章接着写道："著名农村问题专家李昌平日前撰文指出，这种改革未必能使中国走向美国式的大农业，反而可能沦为菲律宾式的腐败大地主模式。实际上， 土地变相私有化之后，随资本因素的进入，中国很可能进入一个土地大兼併的时代，农村弱肉强食，逐渐产生一些「实力超强」的大地主，一些失地农民又成为佃 农，为这些大地主打工。而地主因佔有大量的土地，又在基层政权中佔有绝对的分量，这将对中共的执政产生新的挑战。从目前情况看，有可能成为大地主的，将是 现今农村的村长、村支部书记、恶势力头目、大姓家族的头面人物，他们现在是农村的既得利益阶层，在新一轮改革中，亦极易佔得先机。"
文章最后写道："毛泽东曾经说过，谁赢得了农民，谁就赢得了中国，谁解决了土地问题，谁就赢得了农民。中共历经四代领导，在土地问题上反反覆覆，从 打土豪分田地，到农业合作化、农村大跃进，再到家庭联产承包责任制，到如今的土地私有化，一个阶段有一个阶段的问题，都难以彻底解决。"
China May Let Peasants Sell Rights to Farmland
A harvest in Shandong Province. Many farmers eke out a living on tiny, state-owned plots but seek better paying jobs in the cities.
BEIJING — Chinese leaders are expected to allow peasants to buy or sell land-use rights for the first time, a step that could draw hundreds of millions of farmers more firmly into the market economy, now centered around the cities.
The new policy, which is being discussed this weekend by Communist Party leaders and could be announced within days, would be the biggest economic reform in many years and would mark another significant departure from the system of collective ownership and state control that China built after the 1949 revolution.
Party leaders began reviewing a draft of proposed rural land reform laws on Thursday at their annual planning session, now under way. Policy changes are expected to be announced after the session ends on Sunday, scholars and government advisers say.
The most important change would allow China’s peasantry, which by official count includes about 800 million people, to sell land-use contracts to other farmers or to agricultural companies. Some economists say this shift would lead to more efficient land use and allow much larger farms to be established.
The Chinese leadership has long insisted that the country must remain self-sufficient in the production of staple foods, and is highly unlikely to allow farmers to sell land-use rights for nonagricultural development. But if a market for trading farmland developed as expected, peasants could gain a new source of cash income that could help revitalize the stagnant rural economy.
“If all the speculations are true, if senior leadership is going to lift all the restrictions out the door, I’d say this is a great positive,” said Keliang Zhu, a lawyer with the China research division of the Rural Development Institute, a Seattle-based organization that has pushed for land rights for the rural poor. “It’ll free up the dead capital and allow all this wealth to materialize.”
Mr. Zhu added that the change would give China “huge momentum in terms of agricultural development.”
Chinese leaders are alarmed by the prospect of a deep recession in leading export markets at a time when their own economy, after a long streak of double-digit growth, is slowing. Officials are eager to stoke new consumer activity at home, and one potentially enormous but barely tapped source of demand is the peasant population, which has been largely excluded from the raging growth in cities.
Average income in rural areas lags far behind the average in cities, giving China one of the starkest income gaps in the world, according to government estimates.
Many farmers work on tiny, state-allocated plots of land for a small fraction of the year, investing little in agriculture. While they are entitled to 30-year land-use contracts, the state retains ownership of rural land, and local officials often seize or reallocate it to suit their development priorities.
Rural land disputes are perhaps the biggest source of social unrest in China. Protests and riots in rural areas number in the thousands each year, according to national police estimates. They are often incited by allegations of corruption and illegal land seizures.
Many farmers leave the land to seek work in cities, but they are still classified as farmers under the country’s population control policies and tend to work in low-wage factory or construction jobs on a seasonal basis.
Advocates for land reform say the proposed changes would create more asset wealth for farmers and strengthen land security, which would in turn encourage peasants to invest in farming and increase productivity.
A law enacted in 2002 allows limited land-use trades between individual farmers, but does not permit unrestricted trade between farmers and companies, straight sales of land-use rights or the option to use the land as collateral to obtain a loan, Mr. Zhu said.
The major state news organizations reported Friday that rural land reform was at the top of the agenda for the plenary session. China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper, said, “The meeting is expected to make it easier for farmers to lease or transfer the management rights of their land, measures that have become necessary as many farmers move to cities as migrant workers.”
Private ownership of land is not allowed under the Constitution, and rural land is still effectively controlled by township- and village-level leaders. Officials characterize the proposed policy changes as allowing the farmers to lease or trade their 30-year land-use contracts to individuals or companies.
The issue remains a delicate one. Many party traditionalists strongly favor collective land ownership. They have argued that China’s economy is still not robust enough to absorb hundreds of millions of rural laborers full time. They also defend the system of allocating small plots of land to all rural families as guaranteeing farmers at least a subsistence income.
But repeated efforts to enliven the rural economy without freeing up land have failed, and proponents of moving toward partial privatization appear to have the upper hand.
One point under discussion is whether land contracts should be extended to 70 years from 30 years, scholars say, a move that would give farmers more security and presumably increase the value of their land-use rights.
Chinese leaders have been carefully preparing the public for a major announcement.
On Sept. 30, President Hu Jintao, who is also the secretary general of the Communist Party, made a well-publicized visit to Xiaogang village in Anhui Province, the site in 1978 of a bold experiment in rejecting Maoist-era land collectivization. Since then, the village has been held up as a symbol of rural land reform.
Mr. Hu said at the time that farmers would soon be allowed to transfer their land contracts.
“Not only will the current land contract relationship be kept stable and unchanged over time, greater and protected land contract and management rights will be given to the peasants,” Mr. Hu said, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. “Furthermore, if the peasants wish to, they will be allowed to transfer the land contract and management rights in various ways and to develop management on an appropriate scale.”
Some farmers are already informally leasing out their land-use contracts. After Mr. Hu’s visit to Xiaogang, China Daily reported glowingly that one farmer who took part in the risky experiment in 1978, Yan Jinchang, had recently joined about 10 other households in renting 44 acres of land to a Shanghai company. In 2006, the company built a pig farm on the land.
Mr. Yan, 65, was made the pig farm’s manager.
“We raise special pigs that produce lean pork,” Mr. Yan said, according to the China Daily. “Our meat sells well in Shanghai, and we are profitable.”
From dynastic times onward, control of farmland has always been a central part of the relationship between Chinese rulers and the common people. Rulers are keenly aware of the fact that peasant rebellions related to land use and taxes have overthrown kingdoms throughout Chinese history.
Mao forced farmers into collectives, a move that turned out to be disastrous. In 1978, before the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping officially announced the start of his bold Reform and Open policy, 18 families in Xiaogang, including Mr. Yan’s, quietly decided to divide up communal farmland for personal use. It was the precursor to the land-use contract system that the government later enacted.
But since then, rural land reform has not kept pace with urban land reform, which partly explains while farmers have failed to capitalize on the economic gains of the past few decades. China allows urban residents to trade or sell their land-use contracts freely. That right has allowed people to profit from city property in ways that farmers have not legally been able to do.
There is speculation that Mr. Hu has chosen the party’s planning session this year to announce the rural reforms in order to link himself in the public eye with Mr. Deng, whose initial economic reforms were unveiled 30 years ago this month.
2008年10月8日 星期三
Despite Warnings, China’s Regulators Failed to Stop Tainted Milk
Despite Warnings, China’s Regulators Failed to Stop Tainted Milk
The tainted-milk crisis has devastated China’s dairy industry. Farmers in Hubei Province poured out milk they could not sell.
SHIJIAZHUANG, China — Barely a month ago, China’s staging of the Beijing Olympics demonstrated how the Communist Party could mobilize its authoritarian political system. But the international scandal now unfolding over China’s contaminated dairy products is demonstrating, again, the weaknesses of that system.
Recalled milk products piled up in Zhengzhou, in Henan Province. For months, producers ignored demands for a recall.
Contaminated baby formula has sickened tens of thousands of infants. A baby at a hospital in Chengdu developed kidney stones after drinking tainted formula.
In recent days, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has apologized for a scandal that has sickened 53,000 children, killed at least three and devastated China’s dairy industry, which he has promised to reform.
But a year ago, Mr. Wen made a similar pledge to overhaul safety regulations for food, drugs and other products in response to other safety scandals. His government authorized $1.1 billion and sent 300,000 inspectors to examine food and drug producers, but regulators could not prevent China’s biggest dairy producers from selling baby formula laced with an industrial additive called melamine.
The dairy scandal raises the core question of whether the ruling Communist Party is capable of creating a transparent, accountable regulatory structure within a one-party system. Party leaders realize that effective regulation is essential to convince the world that China’s products are safe and so maintain the rapid economic growth that has helped to sustain the party’s power. But many analysts say the party’s need to maintain control — of the economy and of information — undermines the independence of any regulatory system.
Beijing’s political priority of holding a “harmonious” Olympics was also a factor. Parents who tried to act as whistle-blowers were thwarted by an unresponsive bureaucracy, while Chinese journalists were blocked by censorship edicts banning coverage of politically touchy subjects during the prelude to the Olympics.
Officials now acknowledge that China’s leading dairy companies — including the Sanlu Group, the worst offender in the scandal — were exempted from mandatory government inspections. In hindsight, inspections might not have mattered: in May, the government’s top food quality agency rated dairy companies among the safest producers in China’s food industry, reporting that 99 percent of them passed safety inspections for their infant milk formula. Now, the government says that 22 dairy companies, including export brands like Mengniu and Yili, have produced powdered baby formula that contains traces of melamine.
“The system needs to be re-examined, top to bottom,” said Eliot R. Cutler, an expert on regulation and energy policy at the Beijing office of Akin Gump, an international law firm.
Much of the public outrage in China over the dairy scandal is focused on how the problem remained hidden for months as parents bought bad formula without realizing they were poisoning their babies. Beijing authorities say they learned about the problem only this month. They have blamed greedy corporations and local officials for wrongly hiding the crisis. But there were early warnings that were muffled by censorship or lapses in Beijing.
Fu Jianfeng, an editor at one of China’s leading independent publications, Southern Weekend, recently used a personal blog to describe how his newsweekly discovered cases of sickened children in July — two months before the scandal became public — but could not publish articles so close to the Games.
“As a news editor, I was deeply concerned,” Mr. Fu wrote on Sept. 14. “I had realized that this was a large public health disaster, but I was not able to send reporters to do reporting.”
Even earlier, on June 30, a mother in Hunan Province had written a detailed letter pleading for help from the food quality agency, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. The letter, posted on the agency’s Web site, described rising numbers of infants at a local children’s hospital who were suffering from kidney stones after drinking powdered formula made by Sanlu.
The mother said she had already complained in vain to Sanlu and local officials.
“Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!” she wrote. She called on Beijing authorities to order a product recall, release the news to the Chinese media and provide medical exams for babies who had consumed Sanlu formula. “Please investigate whether the formula does have problems,” she wrote, “or more babies will get sick.”
Hundreds of miles north, the health bureau in Gansu Province was also facing an unusual outbreak of sick infants. The Gansu Health Bureau spokesman, Yang Jingke, said his agency sent an urgent report in July to the Ministry of Health in Beijing describing how local hospitals were reporting high numbers of babies with kidney stones. Mr. Yang, speaking at a news conference this month, said all the babies had taken the same brand of formula. He said the Ministry of Health responded that it had attached “great importance” to the problem and would investigate. But nothing happened.
Beijing typically tries to address scandals with high-profile firings and arrests. After last year’s food and drug safety crisis, the head of China’s Food and Drug Administration was put to death for corruption. His execution was interpreted as the party’s way of sending a stern message warning lower officials to toe the line.
The government also oversaw a four-month crackdown that resembled a nationwide vice sweep: 1,187 criminal investigations opened, 300 drugmakers shuttered, 192,400 unlicensed food shops closed and 1,400 substandard slaughterhouses shut down.
The crackdown in response to the dairy scandal already echoes last year’s campaign. The country’s top food quality official, Li Changjiang, resigned while lower officials were fired or arrested.
But the essential relationship between regulators and industry seems unchanged. Some dairy farmers interviewed this week in Hebei Province said it was an open secret that milk was adulterated, although many claimed they did not know that melamine was being used. Some dairies routinely watered down milk to increase profits, then added other cheap ingredients so the milk could pass a protein test.
“Before melamine, the dealers added rice porridge or starch into the milk to artificially boost the protein count, but that method was easily tested as fake, so they switched to melamine,” said Zhao Huibin, a dairy farmer near Shijiazhuang.
Mr. Zhao said quality testers at Sanlu took bribes from farmers and milk dealers in exchange for looking the other way on milk adulterated with melamine. “In this business, bribery keeps everyone silent,” he said.
A company spokesman at Sanlu, after receiving a faxed list of questions, said the company would have no comment on this or any other aspect of the scandal.
Analysts say the lack of a truly independent regulatory system means that high-profile gestures, like executing or firing officials, have limited impact, especially because local industries are so often intertwined with local officials.
“These after-the-fact administrative measures miss the point,” wrote Arthur Kroeber, managing director of the Beijing-based consultancy, Dragonomics, in a recent note to clients. He said the problem was rooted in the Communist Party’s continued involvement in pricing control, company management and the flow of information.
“The party views control of all three as necessary to its rule,” he added. “Further major scandals are thus inevitable.”
The structure of the Sanlu Group, which keeps its headquarters in this gritty industrial city, is a case in point. The Hebei Province Communist Party appointed the company’s chairwoman, who was also a party official. Meanwhile, city officials in Shijiazhuang are now accused of helping cover up the problem rather than trying to warn the public.
For Sanlu, a pivotal moment came on Aug. 2 when company officials informed the board about the melamine problem. Sanlu is a joint venture with the New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra. Fonterra owns a 43 percent share and has three members on the board. Fonterra’s executives say their representatives immediately pushed for a public recall at the board meeting, only to be overruled by the rest of the board.
Sanlu had first received complaints about its powdered baby formula last December, according to state media. By March, the company had hired private companies to test its milk powder for contaminants. Yet Sanlu never issued any public warnings and never stopped promoting its products. On May 18, days after the devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, the company made a much-publicized donation of $1.25 million worth of baby formula for infants orphaned or displaced by the catastrophe.
But problems were surfacing. On May 21, a father named Wang Yuanping posted a notice on a popular Internet message board, Tianya, in which he detailed months of frustrating interaction with the company. His infant daughter had been sickened after drinking the powdered formula. “Her urine was viscous and yellow, with granule,” Mr. Wang wrote. “This stopped when she stopped drinking and resumed when she started drinking.”
He had first alerted Sanlu in February because he feared someone might be counterfeiting the company’s products. Sanlu asked him to send a sample for testing and later company officials confirmed that the sample was their product. But they told Mr. Wang that the results were a “business secret” and refused to divulge them. By late March, Mr. Wang also complained to local officials in his hometown in Zhejiang Province but they said he needed to pay for expensive testing to prove the formula was bad.
By midsummer, some Chinese journalists were learning that sick babies were arriving at hospitals.
Mr. Fu, the editor at Southern Weekend, wrote in his blog that Sanlu applied pressure to block reporting and used its political connections to prevent some other newspapers from publishing articles about the problem. But with only weeks before the Olympics’ opening ceremony, the timing made media coverage nearly impossible. “We couldn’t do any investigation on an issue like this, at that time, in order to be harmonious,” Mr. Fu wrote.
For two years, the Central Propaganda Department had been issuing broad reporting guidelines that were distributed in Internal Digest, a classified bimonthly Communist Party bulletin. The emphasis was on promoting good news about the Olympics. But the scandals in 2007 over the safety of Chinese food and drug exports complicated this agenda. A huge pet-food recall in the United States was traced to Chinese animal feed adulterated with melamine. At home, Chinese consumers were alarmed over a bad-pork scare.
Propaganda officials responded by issuing rules that required domestic publications to obtain permission before publishing any articles about food safety and other politically delicate subjects.
On July 24, a television station in Hunan Province reported that infants who had consumed the same powdered formula were suffering kidney problems. The station showed packages of Sanlu formula, but was careful not to name the company.
Yet the problem remained largely concealed. “I felt very guilty and frustrated then,” Mr. Fu wrote. “The only thing I could do was to call every friend I knew to tell them not to feed their children with Sanlu milk powder.”
The problem was finally exposed in September when the New Zealand government, after discussions with Fonterra executives, contacted authorities in Beijing. Beijing officials say they knew nothing about the scandal until September, though a Fonterra company spokesman said the company believed the central government knew in August.
Chinese leaders have since responded forcefully, even as they have distanced themselves from responsibility for the scandal. The aggressive initial tone of media coverage shifted this week, as state media outlets like Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, emphasized how much the public appreciated the government’s response. And censors were filtering the Internet and removing certain postings, including the blog item by Mr. Fu.
Reached by telephone on Friday, Mr. Fu said he could not answer any questions about his blog.
This week, China Central Television, the government network, has been offering reassurances that the dairy products still on the shelves are safe.
2008年10月4日 星期六
饮鸠止渴的中国水资源政策
中国 | 2008.10.04
饮鸠止渴的中国水资源政策
总部位于加拿大的环保组织"国际探索"最近发表了一份研究报告，主题是北京的缺水危机。在这份报告中，该组织在北京的专家学者指出，要想从根本上缓解北京 缺水的问题，必须通过限制用水，科学规划来代替目前无节制的扩张用水。此外，中国学者戴晴还在该组织的资助下就北京城的缺水问题进行了一项口述历史研究， 尝试通过更为贴近百姓生活的方式让大家了解这一问题的严重性。
中 国近年来水资源短缺的问题日益严重，尤其是在以北京为代表的北方城市。为了解决供水短缺，地下水位不断下降的问题，中国政府也制订了一系列措施和政策，其 中最为著名的就是早在上世纪五十年代就已经提出的"南水北调"工程。但是，这一庞大的工程从开始构思就不断遭到质疑，而在刚刚结束的奥运会期间，有关北京 缺水的探讨又一次让"南水北调"进入了公众的视线。
据 称，为了应对北京奥运期间的用水高峰，当局曾计划从附近的河北省抽调水源。虽然北京及其周边地区今年降雨量超过往年平均水平，因此奥运用水紧张程度得到一 定程度的缓解。但是，从长期来看，北京以及中国的水资源短缺问题依然严峻。自然条件的不断恶化，而政府部门应对措施的脱节和落后更是"雪上加霜"。环保组 织"国际探索"新近公布的调查报告就以"饮鸠止渴"来形容中国有关部门的水资源政策。
长 期关注环境问题的中国学者戴晴表示："本来北京的决策人应该想一想，北京为什么缺水，为什么地面水消失了，为什么在大量采用地下水，应该想想根本原因是什 么，应该怎样解决。但是他们不但不就自己的行为进行反省，反而是爱用多少就用多少，能用多少就用多少，好像水是取之不尽，用之不竭的。反而从水资源本来就 不丰富的地区引水，就以为问题解决了。这个角度看，是可以用饮鸠止渴来形容的。"
长 期以来，中国从政府到民间对于合理节约利用水资源都缺乏意识。在缺水的中国，浪费水资源的现象却比比皆是。北京奥运会期间就有环保人士指出，北京相关部门 为了美化环境从外地大量引入需要消耗大量水源的植物品种，结果造成劳民伤财的"盆景绿化"。但是戴晴指出，这还不是最糟糕的例子，她说："现在各个机构单 位楼盘等，只要有钱可以做地质勘探，能够买足够的设备，比如钻探机，那么你想钻多深就能钻多深，想取多少地下水就可以取多少水，这是非常可怕的一件事情， 可是政府没有出台任何措施，对其进行监管和遏制。"
戴 晴在关注中国水资源问题的同时还参与组织了一项口述历史研究，也就是走访一些普通的北京市民，用他们口述的亲身经历来反映北京水资源问题的历史变迁和现 状，这些生动的个人经历比枯燥的科学数据更加便于理解，也更加让人触目惊心。说起这个主意的产生，戴晴还有一个小故事，起初他们只是想做一个关于北京水资 源的报告。"后来没想到有一次坐出租车，就先打电话在谈这个问题。司机是海淀的，那里原来就有泉水。他一听我在说这个话题，就聊起来，说他小时候他们家的 井，怎么玩水。结果两次该拐弯的地方都拐错了，最后他干脆把计价表给关了，说不要钱了。我觉得不仅仅研究人员从理性角度来探讨，就是一个普通的市民也有自 己的见解。"
这 次偶然事件最后促成了一系列关于北京水资源的口述历史。目前这些生动的小故事甚至被翻译成了英语。但是，在北京尝试出版这部口述历史的时候，戴晴却遭遇了 莫大的困难。南水北调等规模庞大，后果难测的环境工程背后拥有一个由官方主流意见学者，建筑商，地方及相关部委官员等组成的实力雄厚的利益团体，相形之 下，戴晴等自由知识分子的声音显得弱小而无助。
戴 晴说："我心里觉得特别难过是，这个作品出来之后没想到外国人比中国人的反应强烈的多。好像是堪培拉、纽约、多伦多的人真是为北京的水着急，而在北京的人 反而麻木了。如果这本书我要在北京找个出版社来出版的话，第一很难找到，我做的事情根本什么都不许出版；第二，如果我找人代为出版的话，出版社就会问这个 书有人看吗，有市场吗？接着就是，如果你非要出书也行，先给三万买书号，然后还要自己包销五千本。我觉自己在做一件对北京对中国有意义的事情，却得不到中 国阔人们一分钱资助，也得不到出版家的帮助，从而得不到读者的反应。现在就是这个局面，让人心里非常难过。"
China’s Dairy Farmers Say They Are Victims
China’s Dairy Farmers Say They Are Victims
Dairy cows waited to be milked in Hebei Province recently. Farmers say they are being hurt by the tainted-milk scandal, as well as lower prices and higher costs.
SHIJIAZHUANG, China — At a dairy farming village on the outskirts of this northern city, a group of residents surrounded a village official last week, and started berating him.
In Hebei Province, a dairy farmer poured out milk he was unable to sell. Contaminated milk has caused at least four deaths.
Dozens have been arrested in the Shijiazhuang region.
“We’ve lost everything, but look at the nice car you have,” one dairy farmer said, pointing at a government official they called Mr. Wang, who stood uncomfortably by a shiny Volkswagen in Nantongyi village.
“You know everything, but you won’t talk. You have no conscience!” another man shouted.
China’s dairy farmers stand accused of adulterating their milk for profit in China’s worst food safety crisis in decades. But farmers say they, too, are the victims of a widening scandal that has sickened 53,000 babies, caused at least four deaths and set off an international recall of dairy products.
“I’m desperate,” said Jie Cun’ai, 66, who with his son cares for 56 cows. “I’m one of the biggest losers in this village. The provincial television station says our government will take care of us, that they won’t let us kill our cows or dump our milk. But they are lying. For 10 days, we’ve been dumping our milk.”
Indeed, few in China or abroad will buy milk, infant formula or other dairy products since tests have found that more than 20 companies were selling products contaminated with an industrial chemical, melamine, which can cause kidney failure or kidney stones.
The dairy farming villages around Shijiazhuang came under sharp scrutiny last month after investigators arrested dozens of farmers and milk station operators for spiking milk with melamine, which if blended into food can artificially inflate protein readings, helping it pass quality tests.
But dairy farmers here insist that they never used melamine, and that the real culprits are dairy companies and the milking stations that they operate. They also complain that they have been squeezed by the price controls on food that went into effect last year, which may have created incentives among some farmers and big companies to dilute milk and use chemical substitutes.
Regulatory loopholes and corruption are believed to be part of the problem. Many dairy farmers in the region said bribery was common at milking stations. And dairy experts say local regulators are also known to take bribes or favor companies that are partly owned by a local government entity, which sometimes means that the regulator and the regulated are virtually one and the same.
The government acted last month to try to stem the crisis, raiding dairy farms and milking stations, dismissing regulators and high-ranking party officials and vowing to overhaul the country’s $18 billion dairy industry.
The Sanlu Group, based in Shijiazhuang, helped set off the milk scandal by announcing last month that some of its infant milk formula was contaminated with melamine. Sanlu’s decision to lower its prices this year was the first blow to local farmers, many of whom took out huge loans to purchase cows just two or three years ago and moved here to work as dairy farmers.
Sanlu and other major dairy companies were responding to government price controls that were supposed to help fight inflation and rising food costs around the nation. But here in Hebei Province, the policy hurt farmers who were already struggling to cope with soaring animal feed costs, driven up by a global surge in grain prices.
“Before the scandal, the milk station kept lowering the price, but feed costs had gone up a lot,” said Liu Jin Feng, who with her husband raises 16 cows in nearby Xinnancheng village. “The price of soy meal went up 60 percent over the past two years.”
“There was nothing we could do about price because Sanlu has a monopoly here,” said Guo Huanchen, a 35-year-old farmer who said he was now considering selling his cows to a slaughterhouse. “I think they kept offering a low price because they had no competitor. But now we are suffering.”
Sanlu, which is 43 percent owned by the New Zealand-based Fonterra Group, one of the world’s largest dairy companies, controls the only milk station in Nantongyi village, giving it monopoly pricing power in the area. Every day farmers guide their cows to the village milking station, pump milk directly into the station tanks and then return home, waiting to hear how much they will earn, if their milk passes quality inspections.
These days, though, they milk their cows at the station and then have the milk handed back to them. Because there is simply too much milk, they dump it into drainage ditches or into a cabbage garden near the milking station.
And farmers say that the milk dealers who aggregate milk supplies and sell them to big dairy producers had much more opportunity to add melamine. “We have no way to adulterate our milk,” said Shi, a 38-year-old dairy farmer in Nantongyi, noting that village cows went directly to the milking station, where they are milked by machine. “I think it’s Sanlu and the milking station that blend.”
Sanlu officials repeatedly declined to respond to questions for this article. They have blamed farmers and milking stations for tampering with supplies.
Adulterating milk, of course, is hardly unknown in China. For years, experts say rice porridge, starch and other chemicals have been used to doctor diluted milk to earn extra profits. In 2004, at least 14 children died in a poor area of Anhui Province after consuming what the government later determined was a fake baby formula. The case shocked the nation and led to government calls for sweeping reform.
Dairy experts, however, say regulations still have not caught up with industry con men.
Zhang Guonong, who teaches at Jiangnan University’s School of Food Science and Technology in Jiangsu Province, says the 1986 code regulating the quality of milk is outdated and that he and other experts have called for revisions to the code to help combat widespread fraud in the industry.
“In 2004, I was one of the drafters of the China Dairy Products Quality Inspection report,” he said in a telephone interview. “I found adulteration is extremely widespread: urea, soap powder, starch are very popular additives.” He added: “We suggested new inspection methods targeted on these additives should be written into the regulation. But on the other hand, we fear that once these were written into the regulation, more dairymakers would know these tricks, or even innovate by creating new tricks.”
Dairy experts say that the milk scandal may finally spur the government to heed their calls for change. “The problem was and still is that anyone can become a dairy supplier, and anyone can own or invest in third-party dairy stations,” said Xiang Zhikong, an agricultural economist at Renmin University in Beijing. “There are no licensing requirements or any other sort of quality regulatory standards.”
Nor is melamine the only problem facing farmers near Shijiazhuang. At milking stations in Nantongyi, recent government inspections have also found high levels of antibiotic residues.
Once again, farmers blamed the Sanlu Group, which helped establish the dairy village with the local government several years ago and now controls all injections in the village, according to farmers.
“Now, they say our milk is not qualified, that it has too much antibiotics,” said Mr. Shi, who has eight cows. “But before, Sanlu never rejected our milk. So I think clearly they knew, and in order to meet demand they boosted production.”
Many farmers now say they are facing bankruptcy, and their anger is spilling out into the open with farmers scolding village officials and complaining that the government is not doing enough to help them survive.
Worried about unrest in dairy farming villages, government officials have been brought in to restore calm. In Nantongyi, government officials interrupted several interviews, and then pressed villagers not to talk to reporters. At one point, a pair of women were even dispatched on bicycles to follow journalists around the village. They later apologized to a journalist for having to do so.
In one village, the government even managed to silence some dairy farmers who were complaining bitterly about their plight. Under pressure from government officials in the village, a dairy farmer tried to shush his angry wife and shouted out, “I believe the Communist Party, and under the excellent leadership of the Communist Party I have a right to refuse your interview.”
His wife, though, continued to complain.