In the past, North Koreans were encouraged to give their children patriotic names that held some ideological or even militaristic meaning, such as Chung Sim (loyalty), Chong Il (gun), Pok Il (bomb) or Ui Song (satellite).
In recent years, though, as the county has become more open to the outside world, North Koreans have been naming their children gentler, more uplifting names that are easier to say, such as A Ri (loved one), So Ra (conch shell) and Su Mi (super beauty), sources inside the country say.
Instead of names that end on harder sounding consonants, children are being given names that end in softer vowels, which is more like names given to children in South Korea.
But recently, North Korean authorities are clamping down on this trend, requiring citizens with the softer names to change to more ideological ones, and even their children’s names, if they aren’t “revolutionary” enough, the sources say.
“Residents are complaining that the authorities are forcing people to change their names according to the standards required by the state,” a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA’s Korean Service on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal.
“Starting last month, notices have been constantly issued at the neighborhood-watch unit’s residents’ meeting to correct all names without final consonants. People with names that don’t have a final consonant have until the end of the year to add political meanings to their name to meet revolutionary standards,” he said.
“Anti-socialist”
In meetings and public notices, officials have gone so far as to instruct adults and children to change their names if they are deemed too soft or simple, and that names without final consonants are “anti-socialist,” another source said.
Many parents are “showing strong reluctance,” the source said, privately asking if the authorities will force them to name their children “to reflect the current era of starvation and oppression.”
The government has threatened to fine anyone who does not use names with political meanings, a resident in the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“The order of the judicial authority to immediately change anti-socialist names has been emphasized at every residents’ meeting since October,” he said, adding that it is not known if the government will actually issue fines or how much they could be.
The names must not reflect trends in South Korea, which North Korea says is “a copy of the decadent Western Yankee culture,” according to the second source.
“Authorities criticized multiple generations of families for not hesitating to name their children with a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean names rather than North Korean ones,” he said.
In private, residents sarcastically ask if they should take old-fashioned names like Yong Chol, Man Bok or Sun Hui, the second source said. For English speakers, these might sound roughly as old-fashioned as names such as Gladys, Mildred, or Eustace.
“They say, ‘if being naked and starving is true socialism, we are absolutely against it,’” the second source said.
Many people are expressing strong disapproval “of the tyranny of the authorities who force collectivism, saying, ‘How can humans not be allowed to name themselves? Are we actually mechanical parts or livestock?’”
Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who died on Nov. 29 at the age of 96, was not particularly popular during his 1993-2003 tenure, even though it was a time of fast economic growth and opening up after the Tiananmen crackdown. But he is looking better in retrospect compared to current leader Xi Jinping, who has largely put the breaks on market reforms in favor of state control and has governed with greater repression than his recent predecessors. The timing of Jiang’s death is immensely awkward for Xi, who is facing down widespread protests that have included calls for his ouster over his harsh COVID restrictions.
They have become a symbol of China’s recent wave of protests: Blank, white sheets of paper held aloft by demonstrators to signify their opposition to anti-virus lockdowns, censorship and freedom of speech.
As videos of crowds holding up paper sheets and chanting slogans flooded the internet last weekend, Chinese-language social media posts have come to call the demonstrations in more than a dozen cities the “white paper revolution.”
Authorities have since moved quickly to squelch the protests, arresting some demonstrators and sending university students home, in a bid to quickly snuff out the most overt challenge to Chinese leadership in decades.
Using blank sheets of paper as a symbol of protest is not new.
They were used during protests in the Soviet Union during the 1990s and in recent years in Russia and Belarus as well, Taiwan-based Chinese blogger Zuola told Radio Free Asia.
“In the current climate in China, you can be told off by the government for saying anything at all,” Zuola said. “It’s the ultimate kind of performance art protest — by holding up a blank sheet of paper, you are saying that you have something to say, but that you haven’t said it yet.”
“It’s very contagious, so everything started holding up these blank sheets of paper to show dissatisfaction with the social controls imposed by the Chinese government, with their political environment and with [controls on] speech,” he said.
Pent-up anger
The protests were sparked by public anger at the delayed response to a deadly fire on Nov. 24 in Urumqi, the regional capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, that has been widely blamed on COVID-19 restrictions.
The incident, which left at least 10 people dead, tapped into pent-up frustrations of millions of Chinese who have endured nearly three years of repeated lockdowns, travel bans, quarantines and various other restrictions to their lives.
Videos swirled around the internet showing people in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities holding the white pieces of paper above their heads, demanding an end to the strict “zero-COVID” limits. Protesters also began to call for greater freedom of expression, democratic reforms, and even the removal of President Xi Jinping, who has been closely identified with the rigid policies.
Women hand out sheets of paper in protest over COVID restrictions in mainland China, during a commemoration of the victims of a fire in Urumqi, at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in Hong Kong, China, Nov. 29, 2022. Credit: Reuters
According to an unverified document circulating on social media, officials in major cities were being told to take steps to control the supply of ubiquitous white printer paper, with a major stationery firm suspending online and offline sales.
Compared with the Post-it notes that formed the “Lennon Walls” of Hong Kong’s 2019 protest movement, which showcased huge mosaics of diverse messages and creative personal expression, the blank sheets of paper are a more ironic reference to government controls and censorship, analysts said.
Striking a chord
Veteran Taiwan social activist Ho Tsung-hsun said the white paper revolution had quickly spread across the country, indicating it struck a chord with a wide variety of protesters in China.
“Some people pasted blank sheets of paper next to a statue of [late revolutionary Chinese writer] Lu Xu, and under Xi Jinping slogans,” Ho told RFA.
“Some students sang the Internationale in their dorms at night, while others took their guitars to sing it on the streets, with blank sheets of paper pasted next to their guitars,” he added, referring to the communist anthem.
“In Wuzhen, Zhejiang, some young women sealed their mouths shut, handcuffed themselves and held up blank sheets of paper,” he said.
Ho added that people quickly started using other white items following reports that the sale of A4 paper – the typical size of printer paper in China and other countries – was being restricted by the authorities.
“I’m more inclined to call it the white revolution, because people have been very creative about expressing themselves through white objects, since reports emerged online that it was now impossible to buy paper, that sales had been restricted in a lot of places,” he said.
“If they restrict sales of white paper, then other white materials and objects can be used, such as white cloth or white paint,” Ho said.
Some online accounts have started replacing their avatars or profile photos with white backgrounds, while social media users have used the hashtags #whitepaperrevolution and #A4revolution to show support for the protests, alongside selfies holding blank sheets of paper in the streets or posting them anonymously on bulletin boards and in corridors, cafes and parks.
‘We want dignity and freedom’
A news and commentary account that uses the handle @citizensdailycn across several social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter said the white paper movement was “the revolution of our generation.”
“We want to say what they don’t want us to say: We want dignity and freedom,” it said in an apparent rallying call opposing controls on speech and information, as well as the restrictions of the zero-COVID policy.
The Urumqi fire has coincided with a growing realization that the circumstances in China as it relates to COVID restrictions are unusual compared with other countries, according to Zuola.
“Since the start of the World Cup, the Chinese people have been discovering that no other country is taking [the] Omicron [variant of COVID-19] seriously,” Zuola said.
“People are also angry that Sinovac and other [Chinese] vaccine companies won their licenses through bribery, and over the government collusion with business that has made it impossible to roll back pandemic restrictions over the past three years,” he said.
Feeling their pain
“Then there was the lone protest by Peng Lifa,” he said, in a reference to the Oct. 13 “Bridge Man” protest banners hung from a Beijing traffic flyover. “All of this has been fermenting for some time; it hasn’t happened overnight. There has been a sense of long-running grievance over internet censorship in China, too.”
When the Uyghur residents of the apartment block died in a fire after screaming to be allowed to leave the locked-down building, everyone in China felt their pain, he said.
“They were shouting that they were all from Urumqi, that everyone was a victim of the disease control measures, and that they couldn’t allow those people to be left to die in silence,” he said.
Ho believes there is also a mute reference to ballot papers — meaningless in China, where all “election” candidates must be pre-approved by the government — in the use of sheets of printer paper.
The blankness of the sheets also echoes the lack of clear aim or unified leadership during the weekend’s protests.
“A movement without a leader is what those in power fear the most,” Ho said.
Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster
Duwa Lashi La is the acting president of Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, made up of democratically elected lawmakers who were ousted when the military staged a coup in February 2021.
Though the junta claims to be the legitimate government of the people of Myanmar, the NUG claims that more than half of the country is not under military control. Instead, it is held by a combination of armed ethnic groups and people’s defense forces, militias formed by citizens opposed to the junta.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Khin Maung Soe, Duwa Lashi La said the key to removing the junta from power will be a stronger unity between these groups, and the NUG is working toward that goal.
After the military junta’s rule ends, the NUG advocates the formation of a transitional government that would prepare Myanmar to become a democratic nation.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RFA: The National Unity Government has been waging a resistance war against the military junta for more than a year. How do you assess the current situation of the revolution?
Duwa Lashi La: Our revolution has been going on just a little over a year but we have done a lot. We have been very successful because of the people’s will to cooperate with, and take part in, this resistance. For example, with the people’s help, our people’s defense forces have retained 60 percent of the territory in the country. That’s a success for us all.
Next, we have had a lot of success in cooperating with our allies. Our allied EROs [ethnic revolutionary organizations, another term for ethnic armed organizations, or EAOs] helped us organize and train all our PDF forces. That’s why we thank them a lot.
Many other actions are really encouraging. The people of Myanmar have been supporting us financially, a big help, indeed.
Our success is mainly due to the willingness and participation of the people of Myanmar both in the country as well as in various countries around the world. Though we have had much success, there are still many challenging tasks. We are still unable to ensure the flow of orders to all our troops and there should be one chain of command that everyone follows. We must continue to strive for such unity. We must also train and teach morality for our soldiers to ensure a high level of military discipline. I hope that only after fulfilling such needs, we will have a real military that protects our people.
Another issue is that the NUG has not been able to equip the growing number of People’s Defense Forces with adequate supplies of weapons and ammunition. I would like to appeal to the people of Myanmar to continue to support us and to the international community to continue to sympathize with the situation in our country, as we alone cannot fulfill our needs of food, shelter, medicine, healthcare and other necessities.
RFA: We are now in the second year of this resistance. What does the NUG have planned to advance the cause?
Duwa Lashi La: Learning from the experience we gained in the first year, we have laid down some more goals for this year. Some of them are to forcefully urge the international community to recognize us and strengthen the unity of our people even more.
In addition to these crucial tasks, we have also planned some other strategic goals. We are working on total transparency to let the people and the international community clearly understand what we are fighting for. We are working really hard to present a transitional constitution which we are calling the “TC.” Once we present that, our roadmap is going to be clearly understood by the people and the international community and we will gain more momentum.
Another important thing to know is that the military junta is already wavering. They have nothing more up their sleeve but to hold a sham election and they have already announced one. It is very important for our people and the international community to oppose and disapprove their sham election in 2023, knowing that it is merely a set up. We are also working on a project to address this issue.
One more thing is that the NUG is trying to work together in a more united and strategic way with the resistance forces.
If these efforts are successful, I have hope that the NUG will achieve these goals over the next year.
RFA: What is the NUG’s situation in cooperating with the ethnic armed organizations?
Duwa Lashi La: The cooperation between the NUG and the ethnic armed organizations is of prime importance. We have codified this fact in our charter. Political parties, Civil Society Organizations and ethnic armed organizations are the backbone of our nation. That’s why, to work in conformity with the EAOs [ethnic armed organizations] and to network with them is a major strength of our revolution. So, we will always engage with them and work together.
I would like to let everyone know that there are strong armed groups that have been active since the start of the revolution and some followed not long after and a large percentage of them are working in connection with the NUG in fighting against the military junta.
However, there are some EROs [ethnic revolutionary organizations] that are not working with us yet but we are trying to connect with them. Our beliefs are based on all-inclusiveness and that is why we are always trying to connect with all the EAOs in this revolution. In doing so, we publicly connect with some of them and privately others for discussion.
Thanks to the EAOs, we were able to form the people’s defense forces and receive military training. On behalf of the NUG, I would like to express my gratitude to the EROs for their great help. There are still many challenges ahead. I would like to say that we need to engage and work with the EROs that have not yet been strongly involved, to continue rebuilding our country.
RFA: We have seen the NUG working with some of the ethnic armed organizations but not with others. Is the NUG working covertly with some, and if not, will the NUG pursue relationships with those other organizations?
Duwa Lashi La: As I said earlier, we are working for the inclusion of all people in Myanmar. It’s also in accordance with our charter. So when we are connecting and cooperating to make sure that everyone is included, we publicly connect with some and privately network with some other groups. What I can earnestly say is that the NUG is engaged with all the EAOs. We believe that they will decisively participate in our cause and work together with us. In doing so, the NUG has since the beginning formed a committee to network with our allies, as we believe that all will come together and we are working on that. That is why, I would like to say that we are now in a position to be able to form military regions and carry out our projects successfully.
Smoke and flames rise from Thantlang, in Chin state, where more than 160 buildings were destroyed by Myanmar junta, according to local media. “It is well known that the military junta has always terrorized the people for maintaining its power throughout its history,” Duwa Lashi La says. Credit: AFP
RFA: The military junta is torturing people and burning down villages. How do you assess these issues?
Duwa Lashi La: It is well known that the military junta [and previous juntas] have always terrorized the people to maintain their power throughout history. They tortured people in 1962 and 1988 in similar fashion. They still use the same methods now in the era since the 2021 coup. Although the people of Myanmar protested peacefully in the streets to demonstrate that the coup was not in accordance with their will, and that they wanted to live in a democratic way, the junta did not care and has continued to persecute–and even kill them–to this very day.
More than 2,500 innocent people have been killed so far, as we all know. More than 13,000 people have been detained and imprisoned. The junta even killed some of them by giving them death sentences. What is even worse is that the junta bombed, torched and destroyed more than 30,000 homes across in the whole country especially in the Sagaing and Magway regions.
This is their method. They plan to rule with fear, but the people are no longer afraid. The people know that they will die under military rule with or without fear, especially the young generation, the ones we call Generation Z. They are leading our revolution with the mindset that what should not be feared should not be feared and that is particularly why our revolution is very forceful and strong.
We are doing our best to encourage all of the people of Myanmar to participate in the revolution. This is a revolution for the entire country and we will definitely win. That’s why we have announced that it is a revolution that includes all people from all walks of life, from every corner of the country.
RFA: What do you think is the most important factor in the success of this revolution?
Duwa Lashi La: What is essential is the role of leadership to unite the whole country. To work toward that end, it will take a strong leadership to unite the NUG, the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the National Unity Consultative Council and all the EAOs to come together and work together with a mutual understanding towards a common goal.
People are participating in unity now. They even risk their lives for the cause. But like I said earlier, since it is a revolution, we need to arm ourselves, something we haven’t been able to do sufficiently.
Again, I have to say that our resistance soldiers in large numbers do not have enough food, shelter, medicine and healthcare and technologies. Therefore, I would like to urge the people of Myanmar and the countries with humanitarian sense to help us fulfill our needs.
We now know that, according to the United Nations, 1.4 million Myanmar people have fled their homes due to the brutality of the military junta. To help that many people with food, we need assistance. Our revolution would see faster success, if we get that kind of help.
RFA: Once the last battle is fought and the junta is removed from power, what then? How will the country be governed immediately after? How will Myanmar be returned to democratic rule?
Duwa Lashi La: After removing the military junta from the position of power, a transitional authority will be established. During that transitional period, a constitution in accordance with the charter will have to be drafted together in order to form a new democratic nation.
A public conference involving all ethnic groups will be convened to discuss the new constitution and create a roadmap for the future of Myanmar. In the transition period, we will have to make sure that each state and region draft their own constitution and agree on what they want, which way they want to go and what is important for them.
In the transitional period, we will have to discuss and agree on the issue of responsible authority as our ethnic people have been subject to injustice and unlawful treatments for many years. We will have to make sure that we have a responsible authority in the future where we will all be in a position to self-govern our regions with our own suitable laws. Only then can we build a new peaceful and prosperous nation that we aim to achieve. I do believe that it is possible. We can really do that.
RFA: What do you want to say to the people of Myanmar?
Duwa Lashi La: The mindset that we will no longer let the military dictatorship continue needs to be very strong. It is very important for us to fight against the junta together in unity, regardless of our differences such as ethnicity, religion, gender and financial status. The people’s financial support and the use of technology play a crucial role in our revolution. There is some possibility that these supporters become unmotivated
But a revolution cannot be unmotivated. I would like to say to the people of Myanmar that we have to work together, with a strong sense of resistance and in total unity. Only then can we successfully remove the military junta.
Translated by Myo Min Aung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
During a spate of spontaneous protests across China last weekend following a fatal lockdown fire in Xinjiang’s regional capital Urumqi, a Twitter user with the handle “Mr. Li is not your teacher” was thrust into the international limelight as he uploaded clip after clip of demonstrations and candlelight vigils around the country, filling a void left by the mainstream media, which largely ignored the protests.
Retaining his online pseudonym for fear of reprisals, the overseas-based “Mr. Li” told Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service how he wound up tweeting about the protests with such a high volume of output:
RFA: What was your reason for doing this?
Mr. Li: Actually, it came about by accident. I would often read and receive contributions from Chinese internet users, not just about social incidents that were happening, but also about what was going on in their lives, or their feelings and moods. People know I take these submissions, so they had already gotten into the habit of sending me stuff. So more and more people already knew about me or had already sent me stuff.
They did this because they want to talk about and report on what is happening in China, but they’re afraid that their identities will be discovered, so they want someone else to post it for them.
RFA: You sent out a huge volume of retweets over a couple of days. Did you get any sleep at all?
Mr. Li: On the day of the protest at [the Taiwan-invested, Zhengzhou-based iPhone factory run by] Foxconn, I actually only slept for three hours. But I couldn’t keep that up any more, so I started forcing myself to sleep six hours a day.
RFA: You said on Twitter that people in China sent you so much information that it nearly overloaded your computer’s CPU. What happened?
Mr. Li: Protests were happening all over China. At around 5.00 or 6.00 p.m. local time here in Italy [on Nov. 27], which was when the protests back home were at their height, I was getting about 30 to 50 direct messages a second contributing content. No sooner had I gotten a message and gone to edit it than it would be deleted. I don’t know whether it was getting bounced by other incoming messages.
A lot of people were using Twitter, and a lot of them were sending me content from the scene [of protests], even small ones, some of them in schools, where students had decided they wanted to do something.
These weren’t different submissions regarding the same incident, but different reports of an infinite number of incidents. I had reports from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan; the biggest cities in CHina.
People clash with pandemic workers in Jinan, China, in this video posted to the “Mr. Li is not your teacher” Twitter account Nov. 29, 2022.
There were countless tweets, so many tweets. Some people would submit the same content repeatedly without realizing they had done so, so my DMs were very, very full.
RFA: How do you choose from among so much content, and how do you verify any of it?
Mr Li: I tend to judge the authenticity of content from experience. Also, if more than a dozen people contribute from the same event at the same time, it is basically possible to judge the authenticity of the reports. If only one person contributes something that sounds exaggerated, then it’s probably fake news.
I always hope that I can report this information objectively, accurately, and in a timely manner. However, as an individual and as a citizen journalist, I put timeliness first. I’m trying to deliver the message as quickly as possible, so you can see a lot of it within minutes of an event happening. Because of this, I will also make some mistakes, which is unavoidable. But I try to fix them when I do.
RFA: Which posts had the biggest impact on you personally?
Mr. Li: There were a lot of reports that moved me, because I had never seen such things before. Back in 1989 [at the time of the student-led democracy movement], I wasn’t even born. I only heard about it from watching documentaries and seeing news photos. But seeing these people actually taking to the streets and chanting those slogans had me tearing up as I was editing. I received so much of it, I really couldn’t say which [had the biggest impact].
There are two I can think of, one of which was a livestream of people setting fire to the gates at the Foxconn factory, then facing off with the police, which really impressed me, because I haven’t seen a mass incident like that in years, particularly not live streamed.
The other was from Shanghai on [the night of Nov. 26], when everyone was shouting, “Down with the traitor-dictator Xi Jinping, down with the Communist Party.” Then there was Chengdu. What happened there [on Nov. 27] was very different, because they made sure to protect everyone around them in the demonstration, telling them how to prevent a crush from forming and how to help each other out.
I found another clip from Shanghai extremely moving, where, if the police went to try to arrest [a protester], the others would grab them and pull them back [out of reach].
RFA: This was definitely a wave of protests. Do you think it is a civil uprising?
Mr Li: I don’t actually think it is, because people were calling for something really simple. They want to be able to get food, to go about their lives, and they were saying that they can’t go on like this. It was a very basic demand, and all of this anger came from the [COVID-19] restrictions. These long-term restrictions have left them with no income, an economic downturn, and include restrictions on [overseas] travel, and all kinds of chaos and disruption resulting from the zero-COVID policy.
There is also anger now that they have seen what this means in reality, and about the psychological damage they have suffered, including the long-term harm of controls on their freedom of speech and on the flow of information. It was only on the [Saturday and Sunday] nights that everyone started calling for the Communist Party to step down and for Xi Jinping to be ousted. Those slogans were actually mostly heard in big cities.
We didn’t really hear these slogans in Urumqi at the beginning [immediately after the deadly fire], nor in the smaller cities, nor even in large cities like Wuhan, so I don’t think this was a requirement for most people. For most people, the fundamental demand was an end to zero-COVID and an end to lockdowns.
Most Chinese people were raised with the patriotic education program [in schools and universities], so they see the government and China as the same thing. They think that patriotism means supporting the government. The idea that they could love their country but not the ruling party doesn’t occur to them. Maybe they think opposing the government is disrespectful, or something taboo, or is something that conflicts with their own values. The demands [of these protests] haven’t yet reached the level of trying to topple an entire dynasty.
RFA: Aren’t you worried that your true identity will be exposed?
Mr. Li: ‘Teacher Li’ is one of my nicknames; I have had it since I was very young, because I started working as a part-time teacher when I was very young, so people have always called me that. I’m not worried about my real name coming out because I’m not a completely anonymous person. I’m almost on real-name terms with a lot of people online, with my followers.
RFA: You said on Twitter you are getting trolled from inside China. What’s happening with that now?
Mr. Li: I received a very large number of attacks from pro-government trolls starting on Nov. 27, including personal threats. Some claimed to be from the state security police, saying they know where I live, and they want me dead. Some people in China have started to try to discredit me, because a lot of people there were using me as a source of news. They have been smearing me, calling me a ‘mastermind’ behind the protests. It’s pretty funny that they think the whole of China [erupted in protest] just because I tweeted a few things.
RFA: You warned the Chinese police to leave your family back home alone. Did they?
Mr. Li: Actually, the police paid a visit to my house [in China] today. I don’t know what they wanted to achieve. Some policemen went to my house to investigate, wanting to know where I was … but [my family] didn’t tell them anything. I don’t know if they already knew about me and were just going there to confirm it, or what.
RFA: Given the current political logic in China at the moment, you could be accused of being a “foreign force,” and of trying to manipulate the protests behind the scenes. How would you respond to that?
Mr. Li: The way I cope with this is by only reporting the news, and by sticking to the standards of neutrality, objectivity, truthfulness, and timely reporting. I try to avoid errors. Let them slander me as an instigator, as calling on people to act. I’m just reporting what’s going on. But of course they have stuck their labels on me.
I will keep on doing this regardless, and the reason is very simple. I think there is a strong need for a neutral, objective, timely and truthful voice reporting on what is happening in China on Chinese Twitter. Someone needs to write this stuff down.
A lot of people on Chinese Twitter post highly emotive content. I understand why, because they were prevented from engaging in normal speech before, in China. But I think there should be someone who [posts more objectively]. I was called to do this, so I took it on. It’s like the torch has been handed to me.
RFA: What’s the difference between what you do and news from the mainstream media?
Mr. Li: There is a difference. Mainstream media like yours need very accurate information, information that is proven to be absolutely true, so timeliness may come second. In this regard, we seem to be just the opposite, because on social media, speed comes first, which means there is a lot of fake news and rumor.
Chinese people have gotten into the habit of using social media. If something happens, it will be spread quickly in a very secret and private way through WeChat. You receive a message, forward it with one click, and send it to countless groups, and then countless people in countless groups see the message, and they immediately spread it further. This happens unimaginably fast, so social media can outpace mainstream media, now that everyone has a smartphone.
But [during these protests] a lot of these people I represent were passing information via Twitter back into China, because these messages were unable to spread inside China. If something unexpected happens, you can’t even type about it, and it will disappear immediately and be covered up.
You have no option but to go outside the Great Firewall if you want to see the news. Our biggest role is to let people behind the Great Firewall know what is going on in China.
Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who led the country during its emergence from isolation after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre to a decade of rapid economic growth, died on Wednesday at the age of 96, Chinese state media reported.
Jiang died in his home city of Shanghai just after noon on Wednesday of leukemia and multiple organ failure, Xinhua news agency said, publishing a letter to the nation from the Communist Party, the military and other top organs, expressing “profound grief.”
“Our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin died of leukemia and multiple organ failure after all medical treatments had failed,” Xinhua quoted the letter as saying. “Comrade Jiang Zemin was an outstanding leader enjoying high prestige acknowledged by the whole Party, the entire military and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups.”
Jiang, who served as state president from 1993 to 2003, was “a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, statesman, military strategist and diplomat, a long-tested communist fighter, and an outstanding leader of the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” the letter said.
In this Nov. 14, 2012 photo, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin attends the closing ceremony for the 18th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Credit: Lee Jin-man/AP
Breaking out of isolation
In a party known for gray, dour apparatchiks, Jiang was comparatively colorful, breaking into song, reciting poetry and speaking English phrases in public meetings with foreign leaders and the media.
Plucked from obscurity to head the ruling Communist Party after the deadly Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, Jiang was initially regarded as a mere placeholder during a time of chaos and international isolation.
But he served 15 years in the key post of head of the military, retiring in 2004, and played a key role in breaking China out of isolation.
In this Oct. 18, 2017 photo, former Chinese President Jiang Zemin checks his wristwatch during the opening session of China’s 19th Party Congress in Beijing, China. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
During his tenure, China mended strained diplomatic ties after Tiananmen, recovered sovereignty over Hong Kong, entered the World Trade Organization and won the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
In domestic politics, he led the effort to admit entrepreneurs to the ruling Communist Party, drafting a clunky ideology known as the “Theory of Three Represents.”
Although China had been an authoritarian one-party state since its founding by Mao Zedong in 1949, the Jiang era was liberal by party standards compared to the decade under current President Xi Jinping, who has shifted the country in a totalitarian direction.
A separate Xinhua report said that flags would fly at half-mast at Tiananmen, the Great Hall of the People and other prominent government buildings in China, as well as Chinese embassies around the world.
“In accordance with China’s practice, foreign governments, political parties and friendly personages will not be invited to send delegations or representatives to China to attend the mourning activities,” the report said.
