Day: June 3, 2023

Last month, Beijing police launched a criminal investigation into stand-up comedian Li Haoshi – who goes by the stage name House – after he sparked public ire with a joke that some said likened feral dogs to People’s Liberation Army soldiers “capable of winning battles,” prompting a nationwide wave of cancellations of other artists, particularly acts from overseas. In a recent commentary for RFA Mandarin, U.S.-based legal scholar Teng Biao says totalitarian regimes are the ultimate source of comedy material, and explains why the ruling Chinese Communist Party views comedy as an existential threat:

Tyranny is a major manufacturer of jokes, because autocracy itself is a joke. Those who hold power without winning an election need to rewrite history and whitewash reality, so as to maintain a perfect image of glory and greatness.

In 1966, the People’s Daily reported on Mao Zedong’s swim in the Yangtze River. It claimed the 73-year-old Mao had broken the world record, even after making deductions for the effects of the flowing river.

More recently, the Red Guards are back, the White Guards [COVID-19 enforcers] are here, and we have ongoing agricultural management and the conversion of forests to farmland.

When the population is 800 million, people are limited to one child per couple. When it reaches 1.4 billion, we can have three. What’s that all about?

A diplomat who mouths off to the French media “doesn’t represent the official view.”

There’s a real-name registration system for kitchen knives, and police are willing to travel to Thailand to kidnap a guy for publishing some gossipy books about Xi Jinping, whose portrait now hangs in temples and churches across the land.

Winnie the Pooh is banned, and Chairman Xi carried a 200-pound of wheat without even shifting to his other shoulder.

Anyone not laughing by this point?

Jokes dissolve tyranny. Comedy and autocracy are made for each other. Despotism has to hold itself up as pompous, serious, truthful, powerful, and inviolable. 

And gods, emperors, wealth, ‘truth’, traditions and customs, science, traditional customs, are all grist for the mill of satire, for ridicule and spoofs.

Stand-up has been described as “the art of offense,” but under a totalitarian regime, it is deadly.

Comrade George Orwell, who saw the underpants of the totalitarian system many years ago, said that every joke is a tiny revolution.

Late Chinese dissident and 2010 Nobel peace laureate Liu Xiaobo once wrote: “The political jokes people tell each other in private represent the conscience of the silent majority, and show us just how rotten are the foundations of post-totalitarian rule among the general public.”

When we’ve all seen the emperor swaggering down the street stark naked, a burst of laughter is even more subversive than a child telling the truth.

A joke that doesn’t pick quarrels or stir up trouble is hardly a joke at all.

That’s why the censorship of jokes is never-ending under authoritarian regimes.

Stand-up comedy, sketches, comic duos and other kinds of comedy have almost totally lost their ability to offer political or social criticism under the Chinese Communist Party, because even social comment can become political.

So most comedians avoid them altogether, and limit their material to marriage, family, men and women or celebrities.

And they are increasingly punching down, targeting those weaker than themselves, with the poor, farming communities, manual laborers and the disabled the most common targets.

Ugly people, ethnic minorities, women, the elderly and black people are also discriminated against.

There are even sketches and comic duos who stick to the Communist Party’s “main theme tune” and flatter the government, high-ranking officials, celebrities and the rich and powerful.

Under a dictatorship, the consequences of complaining about those in power are serious.

The Thought Police are ever watchful and are highly capable of winning battles.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie.

The views expressed here are Teng’s own and do not reflect the position of Radio Free Asia.

Former student leaders of China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement launched an exhibit of the Tiananmen massacre in Manhattan on Friday in a bid to keep alive the dream of freedom and democracy amid an ongoing information blackout back home.

The June 4 Memorial Hall’s opening was timed to mark the 34th anniversary of the massacre of unarmed civilians by People’s Liberation Army troops that ended weeks of mass protests on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, which falls on Sunday.

“1989 was the most important turning point in recent Chinese history,” former student leader Wang Dan told journalists at the launch. “The Chinese authorities … want to cover up that history and have the world forget their crimes.”

The events of the spring and early summer of 1989 are still a hugely sensitive topic in China, where public discussion is heavily censored and public mourning for victims is banned.

Wang said remembering the Tiananmen massacre isn’t just about remembering the past, but also about aspirations for freedom and democracy for China’s future.

“We must keep up the opposition [to the regime] and hold our power in reserve for the future,” he said. 

The memorial hall crams photos, contemporary news articles, banners, letters and even blood-stained items of clothing into a small venue on the fourth floor of a Sixth Avenue office building.

Bao Tong’s calligraphy

Among them is a calligraphic inscription of the words “June 4 Memorial Hall” in Chinese made specially by former top Communist Party aide Bao Tong shortly before his death in November 2022, which curator Yu Dahai said was beautifully written, but somewhat shaky, revealing Bao’s frail state of health at the time.

Bao’s last writings to be published by Radio Free Asia in June 2022 gave a detailed description of conversations among top Chinese leaders behind the scenes as a political crisis sparked by the crisis unfolded.

“The student-led mass popular protests of 1989 are the thing I am most proud to have experienced in my entire life,” he wrote in conclusion.

“Power gained by evil means is still evil,” he wrote. “And just demands that result in a massacre are still just.”

One of the exhibits is a heavy mimeograph machine used by former student leader Zhou Fengsuo to crank out notices and information for fellow protesters that was carried out of Tiananmen Square by some students from Tsinghua University – who, along with Zhou, were the last group to leave on the night of June 3, 1989.

“I asked them why they were bothering to lug along such a heavy item at a time like this, and they said they needed it to keep up the fight,” he said, adding that seeing the machine again was like “being reunited with an old friend.”

Symbol of Hope

Zhou, who founded the U.S.-based rights group Humanitarian China, said the collection of more than 100 items is a symbol of hope for his generation, whose dreams of a more democratic China were shattered by the military response.

“It doesn’t matter how big a defeat we have suffered or the struggles we have been through — we are still hopeful,” Zhou said. “The dream of a democratic China lives on.”

He said many of the items on display at the exhibit were given to him anonymously by political prisoners he had helped, or their families.

“The people who took part in these protests wanted these items displayed and preserved, but at the same time, they wanted their identities protected,” Zhou said.

And it’s not just Zhou’s Gen X veteran dissidents who are inspired by the project.

Many of those who volunteered their time to ready the exhibit for launch are younger Chinese people who were inspired by the “white paper” protests across China in November 2022.

One of them, who gave only his surname Dong, served seven months in jail for wearing a T-shirt commemorating the massacre.

“The mainstream environment in China is dominated by [government supporters],” said Dong, who also took part in the “white paper” movement. 

“But since I came to New York and found a bunch of like-minded people, I found I wasn’t alone.”

‘We all want democracy’

Many of the exhibits are from later mass movements, including the now-banned candlelight vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park and artwork from the 2019 protests against the city’s diminishing freedoms.

Wang said there appears to be a direct connection spanning the generations.

“Our two generations share the same values – we all want democracy for China,” Wang Dan said. “We share the same dream.”

Wang said the exhibit has already been targeted by an army of pro-Beijing trolls, who have set up large numbers of fake accounts for the June 4 Memorial Hall on Twitter.

“Online harassment is to be expected,” he said. “A memorial hall like this is clearly going to be a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communist Party … and we have made preparations for this … with the [U.S. authorities].”

Meanwhile, the government continues to silence any attempts to commemorate the date or talk about what happened among the 1.4 billion citizens within China’s borders.

“The June 4 crackdown proved that the Chinese Communist Party is essentially a political party that relies on violence to maintain its rule,” Wang wrote in a May 29 commentary for Radio Free Asia.

“The whole world knows what happened in China, but many Chinese people don’t even know about it,” he said.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has urged China’s military leaders to engage after his call to meet with the Chinese counterpart was rebuffed, saying open lines of communication are “essential.” 

In his key address to the Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore on Saturday, Austin said that he is “deeply concerned that the PRC has been unwilling to engage more seriously on better mechanisms for crisis management between our two militaries.”

The defense secretary referred to China by its official name the People’s Republic of China.

“For responsible defense leaders, the right time to talk is anytime, the right time to talk is everytime and the right time to talk is now,” he said, adding that “dialogue is not a reward. It is a necessity.”

“And the more that we talk, the more that we can avoid the misunderstandings and miscalculations that could lead to crisis or conflict.”

Secretary Austin and Chinese Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu, who has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, shared a brief handshake before an official dinner on Friday but did not speak to each other nor is a bilateral meeting between them anticipated.

“A cordial handshake over dinner is no substitute for a substantive engagement,” Austin said.

The U.S. defense chief slammed China which, he said, “continues to conduct an alarming number of risky intercepts of U.S. and allied aircraft flying lawfully in international airspace.”

Just last week, the U.S. military accused a Chinese J-16 fighter jet of performing an “unnecessarily aggressive” maneuver during the intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft.

“We do not seek conflict or confrontation, but we will not flinch in the face of bullying or coercion,” Austin said.

The obvious rift between the two powers has “become the new reality,” said Huong Le Thu, a non-resident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Regional countries have to accept it whether “they like it or not,” she told RFA.

“But they can contribute to managing the tensions by lowering the heat through facilitating and encouraging dialogues between the U.S. and China,” the analyst added.

Shared vision 

Carlito Galvez Jr., Senior Undersecretary and Officer-in-Charge at the Philippine Defense Department, said Manila believes that “the international law is the greatest equalizer among states.”

The Philippines won a legal case against China’s claims in the South China Sea at a U.N. tribunal in 2016 but Beijing has so far refused to accept the ruling.

The two countries have recently been embroiled in a new spat over their sovereignty in some of the islands in the Spratly archipelago.

“As the old adage goes, good fences make good neighbors,” Galvez said. 

“It is only when neighbors have clear boundaries and respect for set boundaries that relations remain genuinely amicable,” the acting defense secretary said.

Indonesia’s Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto said it is “imperative for us to overcome our geopolitical rivalries, our territorial disputes through dialogues, negotiations and win-win solutions.”

“Compromise is the only way that communities and societies can prosper,” he said, warning that the rivalry between superpowers “has turned into a Cold War” and in any war, “the danger of a catastrophe is always near.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Austin, however, insisted that his country “does not seek a new Cold War.”

“Competition must never spill over into conflict. And the region should never be split into hostile blocs,” he said.

Austin said Washington is not creating nor willing to create a new NATO in the Indo-Pacific as China has repeatedly alleged.

Yet the U.S. wishes to build “nimble coalitions to advance our shared vision” in order to make the Indo-Pacific “more stable and more resilient,” Austin said.

Washington lists Australia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand as its “staunch allies” in the region and sees India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore as “valued partners.”

Speaking about self-ruled Taiwan, Austin said his country “remains deeply committed to preserving the status quo there, consistent with our longstanding one-China policy, and with fulfilling our well-established obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act.”

“Conflict is neither imminent nor inevitable. Deterrence is strong today, and it’s our job to keep it that way,” the secretary stated.

Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese province and resolutely protests against any involvement by “external forces” in the island’s politics. 

Lt. Gen. Jing Jianfeng, deputy chief of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Department, hit back at Lloyd Austin’s speech about Taiwan, saying it was “completely wrong.”

“There’s only one China in the world, and Taiwan is a sacred and inalienable part of Chinese territory,” Jing said, adding that “it is the common aspiration and sacred responsibility of all Chinese people, including our Taiwan compatriots, to complete the reunification of the motherland.”

China’s counterattack 

A researcher at People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Academy of Military Sciences, Senior Col. Zhao Xiaozhuo, said that it is the U.S. who has been trying to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

“The Taiwan Strait was pretty stable in the last ten years or so but the U.S. wants to destroy this stability,” Zhao told reporters at the Shangri-La Dialogue. 

“That way they can sell weapons to Taiwan and make a lot of money,” he said.

Chinese participants at the security forum in Singapore have taken a proactive approach to counter criticism from the U.S. and its allies.

Senior Col. Zhao said that Washington needs to change what he calls “erroneous actions” in the way it interacts with others.

“When it comes to dialogue you have to take care of the opposite party’s interests,” he said, accusing the U.S. side of not understanding this basic principle.

Another Chinese delegate, Senior Col. Zhang Chi from the National Security College at China’s National Defense University, questioned whether Washington had contradicted itself by establishing multilateral institutions while promoting the centrality of the Southeast Asian bloc ASEAN.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Tang Yongshen, former deputy commandant of the same college, hit back at Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand for calling China a disruptive force in the region.

“China has made great efforts to maintain peace and stability in the region,” Tang said. 

“In fact, what you said is disruptive,” he added bluntly.

A Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times, quoted a military official as saying in a report on Saturday that “China is confident to step on the stage and raise its voices.”

“Despite knowing the Shangri-La Dialogue is a platform dominated by Western countries to attack China, China comes anyway,” the paper said.

China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu will deliver a major speech on Beijing’s new security initiatives on Sunday, the last day of the forum.

Edited by Mike Firn.