Bao Tong: Fortune-telling for the Beijing Olympics

鲍彤：金牌
一定很多，不可乐而忘忧
替北京奥运算命之一
Fortune-telling for the Olympics
I see many gold medals but no carefree atmosphere…
Bao Tong
北京快办奥运，结局将会如何？
What kind of a Games can we expect in Beijing?
我不想预测中国奖牌的总数。奥运属于地球村。在某些国家里，国家的价值和作用，常常被无限放大。但奥运是和平，是友谊，是人与人互相学习的学校，不是国家与国家 “较劲”的舞台。把金牌数目，当作“国家崛起”的筹码，是幼稚的。 “国家至上”可以和慈禧太后或者义和团之类相匹配，不能体现奥运精神。尤其是主办国，一旦掉进“我国至上”的泥潭，就会在道义上丧失东道主的资格。我国的运动员和教练员，勤劳辛苦，这次奥运会，一定会得很多金牌银牌铜牌，但奖牌再多，不应该成为乐而亡忧的理由。

Bao Tong: Guizhou and the grandfather ghosts

So who has the power to “deploy police force” whenever they want to? It certainly isn’t ordinary Chinese people, nor is it a democratically elected government. It is a pack of bureaucrats nominated by the Communist Party, whose names have been picked out of a mechanical “election” process, who have been given a franchise on [...]

Ban the Banners: Bao Tong on the Party Congress

This essay by Bao Tong, a former top aide to the late ousted premier Zhao Ziyang, was broadcast by RFA’s Mandarin service on Oct. 23(ZH). I have included the Chinese text below. You can read previous essays by Bao Tong posted in English on this blog here.
“It is my opinion that there is nothing to [...]

50 Years On: China’s ‘rightists’ remember

 The Anti-Rightist Movement (反右派运动) of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of a series of campaigns to purge alleged “rightists” within the Communist Party of China and abroad. The campaigns were instigated by the Chairman, Mao Zedong.
– Wikipedia
“At that time there were huge struggle meetings with more than 1,400 [...]

Bao Tong on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Campaign

This essay was broadcast exclusively on RFA’s Mandarin service June 14 under the title, 论反右派斗争的非法性-为反右派斗争五十周年作:
On the illegality of the anti-rightist struggle–written on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Movement.
By Bao Tong
What sort of a crime is denying the leadership of the Party or reversing the direction of socialism? Citizens have a right to [...]

Poems for June 4: Wang Dan and Luo Yihe

These poems are taken from a collection published on RFA’s Mandarin Web site for the 18th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of people were killed by People’s Liberation Army troops. Wang Dan (ZH) was a prominent leader of the student protest on Tiananmen Square, and spent seven years [...]

Bao Tong’s June 4 essay: Pressure is a good thing

UPDATE: Poems for June 4th. This essay was broadcast recently by RFA’s Mandarin service, to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the military crackdown on June 4, 1989. Here is their anniversary page (ZH), including a collection of poems written for the occasion by prominent intellectuals and dissidents:

“An utterly repressive society leads [...]

Interviews: Peasant authors Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao

Husband-and-wife team Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao made a big splash a couple of years ago with their book, The Situation of China’s Peasants, shocking the well-heeled urban bourgeousie with their tales of extreme hardship and official abuse suffered by the farming communities of Anhui province. Their hard work won them awards, literary nominations, online [...]

Mo Shaoping on the ‘harmonious society’

This clip was uploaded to YouTube by Duowei News, which appears to be an overseas Chinese-run news Web site[ZH]. Here is an English translation of the comments by Mo Shaoping, a Chinese lawyer well-known for defending political prisoners and representing clients in high-profile civil rights cases, like Gao Zhisheng’s. All the [...]

Newsdesk: Doing the Nail House Rock in Guangxi

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UPDATED Tuesday April 3. The Chongqing nail house has been demolished. RFA’s Mandarin service has the details (ZH).
The story so far… Many bloggers around the region have been covering the “nail house” phenomenon which has been sweeping through Chinese cyberspace, and which the official media are [...]