When one of the most charismatic Chinese leaders is ousted in a tangle of mystery, all it takes is just one sentence and 54 characters for People’s Daily to wrap up his whole career. Bo Xilai, China’s once ambitious, flamboyant and most importantly attention-mongering, former party leader of Chongqing, surely lived out the terse 54 characters, if not too few for him.

Bo was widely speculated to be a promising contender for a seat in China’s once- in-a-decade power change among its nine-member politburo, the highest decision-making body in China. But one day after premier Wen Jiaobao obliquely slammed Bo Xilai at government’s annual press conference on March 14, Bo found himself demoted and stripped of any power over Chongqing.

Three days after the news broke, Bo’s removal still extends shock waves throughout Chongqing, the place where Bo thrived and gained a popular support for his storming anti-gangster movement and cultural revolution style “red song campaign”.

“He’s been removed?” “When?” “Isn’t he still in Beijing having meetings?” are the questions spewed out the minute I told the news to my grandparents in Chongqing.

The exact reason why he was suddenly jolted out China’s top political game is still unknown and no one will ever likely know the full behind-the-scenes story beyond what the state media refers to as the “Wang Lijun incident” — when Bo’s right-hand man, Wang Lijun, Chongqing’s former police chief, apparently sought political asylum at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu.

But some scholars argued that the Wang Lijun incident only served as a convenient pretense to dismantle Bo and his once popular Chongqing model. His Neo-Maoist approach upset many of China’s liberal and reform-minded leaders who feared Bo’s policy would bring back another cultural revolution in China.

He Weifang, law professor at Peking University, said in an email that Bo’s campaigns in Chongqing triggered much controversy in China. He pointed out that Bo’s much-campaigned Chongqing model was characterized by a “red Communist” culture revival, a gang-busting campaign and an effort at narrowing the wealth gap, among which the second were most criticized for the way in which targets were prosecuted. Over 3,000 people were arrested and 13 executed since the anti-gangster campaign began in 2009.

He said that during Bo’s tenure in Chongqing, the tensions caused by the wealth gap were indeed eased. By December 2011, Chongqing’s Gini coefficient dropped to 0.421, lower than the 0.55 national average estimated by UN. But he doubted the reliability of the Chongqing figures released by the local government, urging independent organizations to monitor the results.

Regarding Bo’s removal and the collapse of Chongqing model, He Weifang said it rings an optimistic tone for future political reform in China. “It shows that the majority of China’s top leaders in the Politburo refused to adopt a Cultural Revolution-style approach to solve current social issues,” he said. He noted that premier Wen Jiabao has in recent years talked about political reform, though details of political reforms are yet to be specified and implemented.

But for some locals in Chongqing, Bo’s removal simply means relief. Wang Qian, a resident whose father was a local police chief during the anti gangster campaign, said that everyone in his father’s bureau was paranoid during the gangster crackdown, not necessarily because they had shielded local gangsters, but because of the gruesome atmosphere the crackdown had created. “After former police chief Wen Qiang was arrested, the atmosphere was so intense. My dad was really nervous. I’ve never seen him like that before. It escalated into a movement of everyone against everyone. ”

Forty years have passed since a select batch of American journalists flew to China with the former U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1972, restarting the assignment of “covering China” that had been on hold for more than twenty years. As the ABC reporter Ted Koppel later recalled: this was like going to the dark side of the moon. Since then, great changes have taken place in the reporting situation and perspectives on China, and from reporters’ understanding of China to the country’s understanding of the world outside.

A panel discussion of senior journalists and scholars was held on February 13 by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre and the History Department of the University of Hong Kong to explore the development of U.S. media’s news coverage of China.

Nowadays, American journalists are more versed in the language and have more access to news resources than their precursors, and they understand China better, according to Frank Ching, a senior journalist who covered Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the States in 1979. “They feel less like on the moon,” said Ching.

On the other hand, these journalists are facing a totally different reporting situation now. Jim Laurie, also an experienced journalist who covered China during the early days, said “stories were simple then, all of them were about ‘China’s opening up’, but today situations are more complicated.”

The dynamic relationship between the two countries also contributed to the complexity of the reporting environment. “The era of strong men has gone,” said Ying Chan, Director of Journalism and Media Studies Centre. The fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s meant that the foundation of the formerly tight Sino-American relationship disappeared, according to Chen Jian, a professor who studies the history of U.S.-China relations. And even today, current issues like China’s veto of the United Nations’ resolution on resolution and Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States are also having an influence on the bilateral relationship, said by Laurie.

The documentary “Assignment: China – The Week that Changed the World”, was shown before the panel discussion. It told the story of the journalists who accompanied Nixon to visit China-how they were selected to form the press corps, how they tried to cover government activities and reveal folk life, the difficulties they experienced, and their reflections decades later.

How did the American media accomplish this assignment on covering China, while the Communist mainland remained mostly unknown to the rest of the world? As one of the reporters in the trip remarked, most of the reporters knew nothing about China before the trip. “At that moment, what I was told was Mao ate babies for breakfast!” he said.

Nixon’s will was to present a live broadcast of this ice-breaking trip, from which he expected positive impacts on his presidential campaign. Therefore, television was made the first priority for coverage throughout the whole trip. The behind-scene tensions between the prints and television were one of the issues Chinoy revealed in this documentary. Barbara Walters, anchor with NBC, said in the interview that the prints demanded more close touch with ordinary Chinese people while the television wanted more amazing images.

In the wake of the visit, several mainstream American media were able to open their headquarters in Beijing. The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and others all sent their correspondents to Beijing to cover China directly from the Communist mainland, a very first experience for U.S. media. The early stories were all about the love affair between the U.S. and China, reinventing China’s image as a friend against the Soviet Union, said Melinda Liu, the correspondent sent by Newsweek.

Forty years later, the foundations of the Sino-US relations have shifted. Moreover, China’s expanding economy also adds to the complexity of the relation. During the recent visit to U.S. paid by the Chinese vice president Xi Jinping, questions ranging from human rights to Syria are raised in discussion, which was rarely the case back to history.

At the very beginning, everything ranging from the top Communist leadership to the ordinary Chinese lifestyles was appealing to the correspondents. Earlier stories like Deng’s visit to the US tried to alter the twisted image of the China under Communist rule. However, as correspondents got deeper into the real China, the subjects of their stories expanded. Despite being restricted in many ways, foreign correspondents still found many angles they could use to understand China, like the one-child policy and forced abortion. Not to mention the launch of the economic reform, which brought changes as well as problems to China on a daily basis. The stunning economic statistics, along with the human cost of development, environmental pollution and other reform by-products, all became topics of stories.

Today’s coverage on China is complex, given the greater openness in society plus the development of government tactics against foreign media. As for the openness, access to information is much wider than before, thanks to the spread of the Internet. Many correspondents now take the advantage of Weibo to follow closely with the latest trends. Unlike the reluctance felt by the ordinary Chinese to talk to reporters, which was rooted in the long-time hostility against foreigners and the fear of being targeted; Chinese today are more cosmopolitan and willing to talk to foreign correspondents, whether about their bitterness or trivial matters. Also, traveling and living in China is much easier than before, in terms of language, living facilities, etc. Despite all these improvements, one of the central dilemmas facing foreign correspondents remains unchanged: the danger in an authoritarian system of putting your sources at risk. Crackdowns on dissidents have hardly eased in China, especially since Deng’s hardline tactics demonstrated in the 1989 incident. Foreign correspondents and their Chinese contacts are harassed by plainclothes police on a frequent basis.

The producer of this documentary, Mike Chinoy, a former China correspondent for CNN, said “I hope this movie would serve to a use in class, as well as to the public.” With volumes of interviews and historic footages, the documentary presented the assignment of covering China in the context of the re-establishment of Sino-US relations.

The documentary could be viewed online here.

Chen Guangda in the abandoned family yard (Mira Chen)

It was the first morning in the new year of the dragon. Lingnan, a small village in Zhejiang province, was more crowded than usual. Scores of people, mostly men surnamed Chen, were sitting around rickety tables in a yard, drowsing, smoking and drinking tea. Wives and sisters came up with thermoses whenever they noticed that any cup was not full enough. Sunlight leaked through thick clouds, and the yard, formerly the Chen clan’s ancestral temple, seemed less clammy than it really was. Chens scattered in towns and cities had returned for the sake of family reunion. As usual, superfluous speeches by government officials and significant men took up most of the time. After the gathering, a fundraiser to rebuild the ancestral temple was held without advance notice.

Chen Guangda is eighty years old. Heart disease had become a considerable trouble to him in recent years. He had grown puffier and more silent. Sitting among other Chens, he merely stared at his teacup as the men spoke bombastically into the microphone about the past, present and glorious prospects of the Lingnan Village. Yet as soon as any error in the speech was detected, Guangda would immediately raise his voice to rectify it. The speaker would look slightly embarrassed, while the villagers all smiled.

Guangda disapproved of the fundraising, though he did not express his opposition publicly. He thought the financial affairs of the village committee were too opaque, and doubted whether every official was incorruptible enough not to embezzle. He always had too many complaints and criticisms – it was too much for his age and his fellow villagers. He despaired over elections in which he had no idea of what the candidates looked like. He grumbled about eulogies filling up newspapers and magazines. He often used big words like “freedom of speech” or “democracy” when talking with others. “They say that I am reactionary, but I think I’m right.” Guangda said.

The old man’s obstinacy seemed incorrigible. Decades ago he had suffered from imprisonment and labour reform for the same reason. Born in a landlord’s family to a father who had been an officer in Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army, he was defined as “black” for many years in Mao’s China. He had studied Russian at Hangzhou University and stayed there to teach after graduation. Yet the man who had been sorted into “black categories” privately criticized the university’s elections as “meaningless” and its vice-president as “uneducated”. These “devil words” brought him a conviction on charges of “defaming socialism,” and he was put into prison, and later sent to a reform-through-labour farm in Xinjiang.

Guangda returned to his small village after 21 years. His mother had starved to death long ago while he was in the prison. Other older relatives had also died or left the village. He found his only son to be an absolute stranger– a silent farmer who smoked, drank and gambled a lot. Guangda had provided nothing for his son in the past two decades except for a notorious reputation and social humiliation, making it impossible for him to advance his education or get a good job.

They started to live together like other fathers and sons. The silent son never showed resentment toward his father, although his life’s path had veered far off course due to his his father’s conviction. And Guangda, who did not like drunkards and gamblers, seldom rebuked his son for his bad habits. Common language was rare between the two generations. After the son had his own children, and then grandchildren, the old man seemed to be more excluded from the expanding family. He was always removed from the family’s casual talk and laughter, reading newspapers or practicing calligraphy.

Guangda was classified as a “retired teacher” after his rehabilitation, receiving a government pension to live on. “The money was just enough, yet the spare time was too much.” Guangda said. He started to study the village’s history and culture, as well as the clan’s genealogy. He transcribed the old genealogy book that dated from the Qing Dynasty. He drew family trees carefully, and climbed all the hills around the village to search for ancestors’ tombs, marking down their locations and conditions. He collected old photos scattered in the village and tried to figure out who the people were and what their stories might be. After he finished editing the genealogy book, the former teacher signed his Chinese and Russian names neatly in the lower right corner of the title page. He did all of this alone, without help from the family or village. “This is a good way of killing time.” He smiled, “They don’t help me on it. That’s alright. I just enjoy it myself.”

The fellow Chens were not concerned about the old man’s work, just as they did not care about all his complaints about society and politics. They had become too accustomed to that.

“He is always like that.” A middle-aged man whispered to another sitting next to him after the family gathering was over. The two shook their heads. Guangda stood up and left. He walked through narrow lanes and old houses till he reached an abandoned yard with a row dilapidated houses on the side. Guangda spent his childhood here. “When the old grandfathers died, their successors fought heatedly over the ownership of the yard. Finally they decided the best way was just to leave it there. Later one of them burnt some straw here, and the fire brought the houses down. So no one has ever cared about them since.” Guangda said slowly. He gazed at the houses, no expression on his face.

Dreamworks' Kungfu Panda has been a big hit in China (Din♥ra via Flickr)

By Howard Tsang

Dreamworks Animation SKG, Inc. will gain market access to the fastest growing entertainment market through a joint venture deal with Chinese state-owned media groups. The new venture, Oriental DreamWorks, is expected to allow the U.S. film studio Animation China quota restrictions on foreign films. However, China market’s access has a price tag on it. The Chinese groups will collectively hold a majority stake of approximately 55% in Oriental DreamWorks, with DreamWorks Animation holding the remaining stake.

On February 17, DreamWorks Animation announced its joint venture agreement with China Media Capital 中国华人文化产业投资基金 (CMC), with plans to include Shanghai Media Group 上海文广 (SMG) and Shanghai Alliance Investment, Ltd. 上海联和投资有限公司 (SAIL), to establish a leading China-focused family entertainment company.

Oriental DreamWorks will engage in the development and production of original Chinese animated and live-action content for distribution both within China and to other territories around the globe. In addition to content creation, the joint venture will pursue business opportunities in the areas of live entertainment, theme parks, mobile, online, interactive games and consumer products. The enterprise will initially be capitalized with cash and intellectual property valued at $330 million. The joint venture plans to launch business operations in Shanghai later this year.

According to Financial Times, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dreamworks Animation’s chief executive, emphasized that the deal was personally approved by Xi Jinping, the vice-president of China and presumptive new party leader, who was in the United States last week on his first state visit. Katzenberg was quoted as saying: “When you look at this in the context of what the world will look like in five to seven years from now, China will be the world’s number one media market. It will be the largest live entertainment market, the number one consumer products market … so to create a family-branded entertainment company [in China] is an honour for us and a huge opportunity.”

In China, Dreamworks Animation’s production “Kung Fu Panda 2″ grossed a record-breaking 597 million yuan (about $93 million) during the summer of 2011. China is the fastest growing cinema and movie market in the world, adding cinema screens at a rate of about three screens a day, and the nation’s theaters recorded $2 billion in box-office receipts in 2011.

Although China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, film distribution is still a duopoly controlled by the state-owned China Film Group and its sister company Huaxia Film Distribution. The Chinese government still caps the number of imported titles at 20 per year, and only approved films are allowed to share in a percentage of the gross ticket sales they generate.

In 2007, the U.S. brought a complaint to the WTO. Two years later, the WTO ruled that China had broken its trade rules by restricting imports of foreign movies and other media. In an attempt to resolve outstanding issues related to films after the U.S. won in a WTO dispute last year, China made a concession last Friday.

According to Motion Picture Association of America, China will permit 14 premium format films (IMAX, 3D) to be exempted from the 20 import title quota, which remains in place, and the box office share US studios earn under the master contract will increase from to 25% from 13%.

Despite China’s latest concession, the number of foreign movies and the revenue share of box office receipts are still strictly controlled in China. This situation highlights the merits of Dreamworks’ joint venture deal as a way to circumvent the aforementioned restrictions.

According to Caixin Media, a source close to Dreamworks Animation was quoted as saying that the new joint venture’s films will be produced entirely in China and Chinese side will have final say on content. In other words, Oriental DreamWorks’s productions will be branded as “Made in China” and exempted from import restrictions.

Dreamworks Animation’s choice of Chinese partners is also highly strategic.

According to Caijing Media, CMC, established in April 2009, was China’s first media sector focused fund approved by China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). CMC’s key founding partners included Shanghai Dongfung Huijin 上海东方惠金文化产业投资有限公司 (a subsidiary of state owned Shanghai Media Group上海东方传媒集团有限公司 (SMG)) and China Development Bank (whose founding chairman is Chen Yuan陈元, son of powerful revolutionary-era leader Chen Yun陈云).

Another Chinese company that plans to be included in the Chinese group is Shanghai Alliance Investment, Ltd. 上海联和投资有限公司 (SAIL), which is managed by the Stated-owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission of Shanghai Municipal Government (上海市国有资产管理监督委员会).

According to political scholar Zhiyue Bo (薄智跃), the Shanghai Municipal Government established Shanghai Alliance Investment Ltd in 1994. Jiang Mianheng (江绵恒), son of former President Jiang Zemin (江澤民), was made its legal representative, and then made Chairman.

A CNN report from 2001 highlighted Jiang Mianheng’s role. He was described as working “behind the scenes, outlining strategy for about a dozen companies and investment firms, securing funding from Chinese and international investors, and putting together deals based on his extensive network of relationships among China’s ruling class.” A Hong Kong venture capitalist likened him to Silicon Valley’s prominent VC John Doerr.

The deep connection with the “Shanghai faction” and the involvement of a heavyweight princeling within the CCP, plus Xi Jinping’s public approval of the deal may arouse further speculation on intra-party balance before party leader transition.

According to a cable from U.S. Embassy Beijing that was leaked by Wikileaks with the subject line “Top Leadership dynamic driven by consensus, interests,” dated July 2009, the U.S. Embassy’s “well-connected contacts” reported that “China’s top leadership had carved up China’s economic ‘pie,’ creating an ossified system in which ‘vested interests’ drove decision-making and impeded reform as leaders maneuvered to ensure that those interests were not threatened.”

In China, market access has never been equal or free. Multi-national corporations still have to play according to the China’s rule of game.

The panel at the Asia Society in Hong Kong (Patrick Boehler)

The Asia-Pacific region needs stronger institutions to avert conflict between China and the United States, concurred a panel of foreign policy experts at a panel discussion in Hong Kong on Feb. 10.

“We mustn’t make adversity or enmity between the United States and China a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said John D. Negroponte, former American director of national intelligence and deputy secretary of state.

Historical links with American traditional allies in the region are not enough to maintain a balance power in the region, said Negroponte. “We have to institutionalize these relationships,” he said point at a network of treaties and organizations similar to that which controls America’s relations with Europe.

“I don’t think balance of power is entirely dead as a concept. There needs to be an equilibrium within this community,” he added.

Japanese financial magnate Toyoo Gyohten said he is seeing the bearings of a confident superpower in Chinese foreign policy. “China believes that the rise of China and the fall of the United States is a historical destiny,” he said. “So time is on their side.”

He added that he was concerned of a coming clash of civilization between the two superpowers.

“What China needs most now is try to establish a national ideology, which can be accepted and be respected in shared world”

“China needs to create its ethos of a global leader,” Gyohten said.

Chinese Professor Yuan Ming, director of Peking University’s authoritative Institute of International Relations, called the lack of that “spiritual dimension” a major dilemma.

“We still don’t understand what really Confucius means,” she said. “We have to revisit the Classics.”

How to combine those old traditions with modern ideas, values remains a big challenge,” Ming said.

Former prime minister of South Korea Lee Hong-Koo concurred that Chinese leadership will be needed alongside American leadership to bring about Korean unification, which he sees as vital for long-term peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

This year will see elections and possible leadership change in the United States, China, South Korea and Russia, he noted, pointing to major changes in foreign policy those changes could bring about.

Negroponte said that the United States has embraced its new pacific orientation not only in foreign and economic policy, but also in culture and demographics.

“You can almost think of President Obama as sort of an Asian president, the fact that he was born in Hawaii and spent an important part of his youth in Indonesia,” he said. “We haven’t had a president with that kind of experience.”

Negroponte had started his career in Foreign Service in Hong Kong in 1961. He visited Mainland China for the first time with then US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972. One year earlier, Kissinger’s secret first visit to Beijing started the process of establishing diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries.

The panel discussion was held at the Asia Society Center in Hong Kong, which had just been inaugurated a day earlier. It marked the 40th anniversary of the state visit of American president Richard Nixon to China in February 1972.

While the current state of the Chinese performing arts is not likely to “attract any international delegates,” it could take off in as little as one or two years, according to a veteran consultant for arts organizations in China.

The consultant, who asked to remain anonymous, said Chinese organizations “need to do adequate market research so they can connect and take advantage” of international conferences and overseas marketing fairs, similar to the International Cultural Industries Fair (ICIF) that took place in Shenzhen on May 13-16^th.

The consultant visited the ICIF as part of a larger tour of international cultural fairs and conferences. The ICIF is widely considered to be the largest cultural fair in Asia, with over 4,500 booths filling more than 100,000 square meters of conference and exhibition halls in Shenzhen.

The consultant described the huge exhibition halls at the ICIF as “chaotic,” explaining how there were “huge built environments with audio and video blaring to cancel each other out… [and] costumed, animated figures wandering around” while visitors sat tasting ginseng tea or admiring shoes. Many exhibits were unmanned or contained only Chinese language promotional materials.

The export of Chinese culture to international audiences has been a key focus of Chinese authorities for several years now, as the government continues with what it has termed “Cultural System Reform,” effectively a process of privatizing state-run cultural institutions, which it began in 2003.

In 2009, the Ministry of Culture launched a platform for assisting Chinese cultural products, including the performing arts, in accessing the international market. It was part of China’s “Chinese Culture Going International” strategy, which hopes to use Chinese cultural exports as part of an effort to promote China’s “soft power” abroad and increase Chinese cultural influence overseas.

Officials at all levels have been swept up in calls to promote “cultural soft power.” In May of this year, Li Changchun, China’s Propaganda minister, told Xinhua, “we should improve our understanding of the role and impact of culture.”

Li has been a key proponent of promoting Chinese culture, both abroad and at home, and he has called for “deepened cultural restructuring” of existing cultural industries so that they might better compete overseas.

Beijing’s policy of prioritizing cultural exports has been “a big push,” the consultant said, especially for not-for-profit organizations opportunities that might not have a product with enough commercial appeal to gain overseas exposure. “If they get some help from the ministry they can still get a good performance in a foreign venue,” she said.

China’s burgeoning arts scene has been one of the more notable successes. Contemporary Chinese artists hugely popular among overseas collectors and collaborations between western and local museums are gaining traction.

Local governments have also been sponsoring the development of dozens of new “cultural districts” in cities across the country, lured by the draw of Beijing’s hugely successful 798 Art District, a former munitions factory redesigned in 2002 to house artist’s studios, galleries, and boutiques.

While the consultant felt that most Chinese performing arts groups still need work to reach similar international caliber, she was confident that it wouldn’t take long for them to get there.

“If they were to do the research and then the person had enough resources to act on what they’d learned, they could turn this around in a year and a half,” she said. “As long as someone takes the time to meet people they could take the next year for market research and then have everything they need to go in full tilt to exhibit and to target the market with what they have.”

Some of China’s other, more distinctive cultural products, such as Mongolian throat singing, however, have done well and been able to cross over. Contemporary Chinese dance is already an “international powerhouse,” she said, with “at least five international caliber companies that are already doing a lot of very successful international touring.”

She cited the development process of the Shaolin Warrior show, which tours globally and is a huge commercial success, as a model for other arts groups to follow.

“The artists spent about three to four years developing the Shaolin Warriors show and really did their homework,” she said. “They studied their market and they really work-shopped until they had something they were sure they could sell.”

Hopefully, the consultant said, producers will build on what’s been learned and go better prepared to international markets. But only this will only happen, she stressed, if they dedicate the resources to researching how to do it instead of just throwing cash at it.

“It takes a lot of time, sitting and hanging out and talking to presenters and studying the market and going online and looking at who’s presenting what where,” she said. “They need to learn about their audiences.”

“We don’t want to forget, we try not to forget” – vigil attendee Michael

A man leaves a chalk message before the vigil begins (credit: Alice Woodhouse)

Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown is still drawing large crowds after 22 years.

Although organisers said the numbers of young people taking part were high this year, some older people who refuse to forget the night of June 4 remained among them.

Participant Michael was living in Toronto, Canada, in 1989 and joined protests outside the Chinese embassy after watching the tanks roll towards Tiananmen Square on the television news.

He said nothing had changed since the protests 22 years ago as China is still under one party rule, adding that persistence was the most important factor in pursuing democracy in China.

“Starting from a couple of years before, Hong Kong people started bringing small kids, they want to let them know what’s happening in China,” he said. “Beijing thinks we’re a bunch of old guys so will be removed from this earth soon, but the old guys brought the next generation and they are bringing the next.”

A middle school student from Hong Kong who joined the vigil said he had learnt about June 4 through the Internet and documentaries on YouTube.

“The way I understand June 4 is that many university students at the time thought the communist party was too corrupt. So they protested in Tiananmen Square, protested and went on hunger strike,” he said. “But not only did the government not listen, they sent the army out to repress the protests. And up until today they have still not admitted they made an error.”

At the entrance to Victoria Park a handful of booths manned by pro-democracy organisations and unions handed out sprigs of jasmine flowers, sold t-shirts supporting Ai Weiwei or Liu Xiaobo and collected donations to support the event.

A female volunteer at the booth for the Hong Kong League of Social Democrats, who declined to give her name, said their stall gave out leaflets and books explaining the Tiananmen incident.

“I think for June 4, something we must focus on is why in 1989 our students and our citizens could join together to fight for democracy but now, these voices virtually don’t exist any more,” she said.

As the vigil continued, a woman passed through the crowd handing out badges bearing the phrase May 35^th with a picture of a dead dear and upside down bottle of spirit, an image designed to outwit Chinese internet censors. The words for “dead deer” sound similar in Mandarin Chinese to “six-four,” or June 4, while the upside down bottle sounds like the phrase “pingfan,” or “reverse the verdict,” and the word for a common Chinese alcohol, “baijiu,” sounds like “eight-nine,” for 1989.

For more about the vigil, see our soundslides here.

Don't forget June 4 (by Laihiu)

By Francis YIN

Hundreds of students rallied at Freedom Square in Taipei to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of Tiananmen democracy crackdown on Saturday, the largest activity in memory of June 4^th crackdown in Taiwan in recent years.

 Wang Dan, a former student leader in Tiananmen democracy moverment gave a speech calling upon Taiwanese to care for human dignity and rights on the mainland. Wang, who spent seven years in prison years after the 1989 crackdown and was exiled to U.S. in 1998, now resides in Taiwan and teaches at National Chengchi University. 

President Ma Ying-jeou did not attend the vigil, but he released a statement on the incident, as he did last year. 

In his statement, “The Journey Begins with a Single Step”, Ma cited the lessons and experiences in Taiwan’s history to remind the mainland Chinese authorities of the need to be more accepting of dissidents, and said that political reform is not a disaster but a new beginning which would brings stability and progress and builds trust in the government. 

Ma urged the mainland Chinese authorities to “have the courage to undertake political reforms and promote the development of freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law”. The first step, he said, should be “treating dissidents with leniency, and appreciating their value to society”, with actions such as the release of Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei, and others. 

Ma’s statement this year took a stronger tone than in the last year, when he praised the progress of human rights on the mainland. But his standpoint is still more moderate than in 2002, when he had announced “no unification without redress of the June 4 incident”. 

The Mainland Affairs Council also released a statement, urging the mainland government to face the demand for common values from society and promote political reform. 

Both statements said that if the mainland’s promoted political reform, it would “reduce the psychological distance between the people of the two sides”.

The Covering China team takes you on an in-depth Audio Visual tour of the 22nd Tiananmen anniversary.

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