Countdown Beijing

When the Earth Moves

2008-05-12T18:59:12Z

Although thousands were evacuated from buildings in Beijing and Shanghai, for me the swaying ceiling lamps and window blinds (and my barking dog) were my only hints of the earthquake that hit eastern Sichuan province at 2:29 PM local time. Now we hear the temblor was 7.9 on the Richter scale and that state media are reporting that as many as 5,000 people were killed in a single county. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, 80 percent of the buildings collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province, with 900 high school students said to be trapped in the rubble of their building. The U.S. Geological Survey says it took place 93 kilometers (about 56 miles) northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.

Chengdu's a city of 10 million with all the tall buildings, crowded streets and dense urban malls that characterize modern Chinese metropolises. I've been trying to phone friends and sources in Chengdu and another Sichuan city, Mianyang, but so far no luck on either land lines or mobiles. According to its Web site, Chengdu's Shuangliu airport was closed temporarily for safety reasons after the quake.

Sichuan lies in an area of considerable seismological activity. A 4.7 quake hit an area in western Sichuan's Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture February 27, according to the Sichuan Seismological Monitoring Network; official reports say it caused nearly US$20 million in damages to 220 villages. A 3.7 temblor hit the same general area February 16. (The last major quake to hit China was on March 21 when a 7.2 magnitude quake struck the Central Asian city of Hotian, also known as Khotan, a cultural and economic center for members of the Muslim Uighur minority in far western Xinjiang province.)

Now here's a coincidence: I just wrote a story for the magazine about superstition and disasters. Many Asians see major calamities as examples of "divine intervention" -- such as the recent Burmese cyclone which many citizens there interpreted as karmic payback for the military junta's bloody crackdown on monk-led protests back in September. My piece mentioned China's traumatic July 1976 Tangshan earthquake, in which up to 600,000 died.

The Tangshan quake, which took place in July of that year, was widely perceived as a portent that the ailing dictator Mao Zedong would die (he did in September) and that the Maoist era of isolationist rule would end (it did beginning in October, when the ultra-leftist "Gang of Four" was toppled). So many big political events took place in 1976 that Chinese called it the "year of curses." With all the drama over China's Olympic torch relay, and anticipation growing over the August Games, authorities no doubt hope today's earthquake will prove to be just a seismological blip.

UPDATE: Twelve hours later, China's official death toll is awful: nearly 9,000 dead and at least 10,000 injured. I finally talked to friends in Chengdu, the provincial capital (about 90 kilometers--almost 60 miles--from the epicenter at Wenchuan). China Mobile says telecoms disruptions were due partly to the fact that more than 2,300 mobile phone towers collapsed in the quake -- but it's still possible to send cellphone text-messages to Chengdu residents requesting that they call out (which many can now do).

Restauranteur and photographer Leo Chen said Chengdu wasn't so terribly affected. Swaying buildings and evacuation of hospital wards. "Gas stations stopped selling petrol due to safety concerns, and the possibility of aftershocks," he said. However huge boulders dislodged by landslides are blocking roads to Wenchuan, and authorities are turning back outsiders who don't live in that area. Leo said some travellers managed to reach another badly affected location, Dujiangyan, north of Chengdu. Xinhua says a school collapse trapped 900 students in debris at one township there. Photographers were taking pictures of childrens' corpses in the rubble. State media's also reporting 80 tons of toxic ammonia spilled when a chemical plant in Shifang was damaged; 6,000 people evacuated.

Tonight I talked with the Czech Ambassador to Beijing. The Czech Republic has officially offered to send a 15-person team specially trained for earthquake search-and-rescue work to the affected area -- the first foreign government to formally offer assistance to Beijing.

The disaster's severity was updated to 7.9 on the Richter scale. That makes it China's most deadly temblor since the July 28,1976 Tangshan quake, when government officials initially reported 655,000 deaths but later downgraded the death toll to less than 255,000. The Wenchuan epicenter is in Sichuan's Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, where ethnic Tibetans are the majority. Wenchuan is also home to the world-renowned Wolong panda reserve, where 1,200 of the endangered animals reside. Wolong is a breathtakingly beautiful natural setting; it's hard to think about so much suffering in paradise.

Ticket-buying, Round 3: "A bit slow"

2008-05-12T01:39:42Z

Unlike the Olympics’ second round of ticketing -- during which the online sales system was overwhelmed with traffic and ultimately forced to a halt -- Round 3 sales were heralded as a success by China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency. Within the first thirty minutes of the 9am opening on Monday, May 5th, the baseball, boxing soccer and wrestling events were sold out. Within the first three hours, 60,000 tickets had been sold online and an additional four events had been bought out. The batch of 1.38 million tickets made available to China-based buyers was purchased in its entirety within two days.

Still, it was anything but smooth surfing when I tried to buy tickets — and it seems I’m not the only one who experienced Internet hiccups, if you see reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal China blog, as well as ESPN and Al Jazeera and the Shanghai Daily. Other than the pair of tickets I managed to purchase precisely at 9:01am, a friend and I spent the rest of the day logged into our Olympic ticketing accounts attempting to buy additional tickets -- to no avail.

We were given a constant run-around. For example, if we clicked into the ticketing page for events that BOCOG had announced still had tickets “Available”, oftentimes the web programming appeared incomplete. We didn't get an announcement that the tickets were now Unavailable” (which was used to indicate that tickets had been sold out). Nor did we get the alternative option to “Add to lot” or “Continue”, which is how I had managed my first set of tickets.

Once we did find a ticketing page that still had tickets “Available” -- and which had either a functional “Add to lot” or “Continue” button -- we tried to click through. We were met by the less than reassuring “We are currently working on your request” response.

     The order-processing, blue ticker tape snailed its way across my screen for over nine hours.

     In addition to these types of delays routing our requests, every one of two attempts met a blank screen or the message “Firefox can’t find the server”. Sometimes it wasn’t Firefox specifically that got blamed: it was any browser I used, at least according to the common message “Bad request: your browser sent a request your server could not understand”.

     When my browser and server were actually cooperating, and when that blue ticker tape paraded me through the order processing system successfully, I became accustomed to the inconclusive “We’re sorry, we’re unable to process your order right now”. I would return to the same event to check on its status; and there were invariably still tickets “Available”. Since this meant my chosen event had not been sold out, I wonder if “unable” simply meant “unwilling.”

    According to Zhu Yan, director of the Beijing ticketing center, the online system received 27 million hits per hour during its peak, and he openly admitted “the website may become a bit slow during peak hours but it's still normal and there's no problem.” Since I’m lucky enough to have tickets for the Women’s Soccer Finals, I guess I should be thankful the system was only “slow” and not dysfunctional like Round 2.

And we still have Round 4 to go.

Insecurity Checks II: Leave it Home or Lose it

2008-05-09T02:25:38Z

March 15 was the day many foreign media scrambled to try to reach Tibetan communities in Western China in the wake of Lhasa's ferment. It also happened to be the day that stricter no-liquids-allowed airport security checks came into force. The pileup of people waiting to go through security at Beijing's Capital International Airport was so long that one Beijing-based foreign correspondent missed his plane.

On my own quest for fresh news from Tibetans, I flew out to Lanzhou, in the western province of Gansu, first thing the next morning, March 16. Anyone who hadn’t seen news of the regulations ahead of time was in trouble. For one, Chinese are not the most patient or trusting travelers; they seem particularly averse to checking in bags. Add to that the fact that at many check-in counters (like mine), the airline staff neglected to make note of the new rules.

The first I heard of it came over the P.A. in the hall near the security checkpoint, by which time it was too late. Hordes of people had amassed behind me, and many many more in front. The announcement played on and on in a repeating loop, a death knell to the liquid-toting masses.

I waited in line for about 50 minutes. During that span, I stood behind two Chinese businessmen wearing sweaters under suits. They seemed clear enough about the reasons for the added hassle. “It’s all because of Uighurs making trouble,” one quipped to the other - a stereotypical remark. This couldn’t be good for race relations, I thought. Now Tibetans were ‘making trouble’ too, I told the men. That they didn’t yet know. Together we joked that if officials didn’t get the lines at security under control, they’d be dealing with a popular uprising of their own.

Things did devolve quickly. The crush of bodies might have suited a Chinese train station before a national holiday, or a supermarket with promotional giveaways on cooking oil, but not the expanded Beijing Capital International Airport with its Sir Norman Foster-designed terminal.

In the former main terminal, Chinese jetsetters jostled for position. Spats broke out. Young children shrieked in frustration. In the scramble, a bespectacled woman lost the stub of her boarding pass, and was almost trampled after she dropped to her knees to retrieve it. A man in a silk tie retreated on tiptoe along tables moved in to partition the lines, in order to check in his male clutch purse full of toiletries.

Most passengers simply elected to surrender theirs. It was either that, they figured, or risk missing their flights. At the front of the line, female attendants from the Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) were collecting discarded bottles. There was green tea, nail remover polish, cologne and hand lotion. The haul of confiscated cosmetics and other personal grooming items was enough to open a hotel kiosk.

Would the CAA officers divy up the take? “No,” said one. “We probably just throw it all away.” She didn’t sound convincing. The next day, I imagined, her husband could be shaving with a half can of lime-scented shaving cream. My shaving cream.

I was forced to hand over a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of contact lens solution, along with the aforementioned shaving cream. I put up a fight for the lens solution, since some containers smaller than 100 milliliters were still allowed provided they passed screening -- and I only had a few days’ worth of drops left. But my objections were futile. All that mattered was the size of bottle, I was told. There was no period of leniency, no room to negotiate.

One of the attendants was apologetic for the “inconvenience”. Most were stone-cold. “Sorry this is the policy. It’s for your security. We’re just doing our best to execute it,” uttered one woman. At the checkpoint, a male officer inspecting bags one by one rejected any suggestion that CAA was caught unprepared. I began to argue with him. But another businessman in front of me had had enough of my quibbling. “Okay, Okay. Enough already. You should just be happy you got to this point!”

On the Web, some Chinese Netizens have vented frustrations and criticism toward news of the ban. From the thread of comments appended to one report carried on Sina.com in early April, I found the following:

“1. Chinese people always go to the extreme in handling matters. Thus it’s come to the point where you can’t bring anything.
2. Say that for checked luggage, the compensation for every kilo lost became US$50. Then everyone would definitely be willing to check their luggage. With checked bags right now, first, it’s very dirty; second, it wastes a lot of time; third, it’s too easy to lose something!”

“I wish the makers of hair products and cosmetics would produce smaller containers.”

“It’s appropriate to be strict. But it should be more human.”

And my personal favorite:

“…No liquids are allowed, not even baby’s milk. If the kid’s hungry, find a stewardess.”

Since September 11, goes the wry expression in liberal America, “security is the new freedom”; whereas in China, security has always taken precedence. Few Chinese have any illusions over that approach, and in many cases the masses tends to agree with it.

The age-old Chinese faith in order and fear of chaos kicks in, hammered home for many by lingering memories of the Tiananmen crackdown, and the Cultural Revolution. By now, most people are well-acclimated the drill of everyday life under the whims of an insecure policing regime, which in reality functions in extreme spells of laxness and stringency. While levels of enforcement are highly irregular, at least the timing of a crackdown is much more predictable. New ground rules tend put everyone on alert, and to numb many people's instincts to question the need for them. After all, the official argument goes, the Olympics are at stake. In response to which the people understand that this, too, shall pass.

A few weeks later, I was back at Capital International for another trip out west, this time bound for Xinjiang, to investigate a protest in the Muslim Uighur outpost of Khotan. This time I checked my rucksack. I found that the wait at the security checkpoints had subsided considerably. At front of some of the lines, sample bottles of liquids were arrayed as a reminder of what not to bring. Passengers had learned the drill, and were more patient and compliant. On the plane, for once, there was some extra room in the overhead bins.

I caught my connecting flight to Khotan in Urumqi, where Uighur assailants reportedly boarded the flight that was targeted in March. Every check-in counter at the airport there displayed a full-size photo of restricted combustible, inflammable, explosive, toxic, corrosive, compressed, radioactive, infectious, oxidizing or otherwise “dangerous goods”. These signs weren’t all new; CAA last instituted caps on liquid containers in 2002, after a fire tore threw the cabin of a plane and it plunged into the sea off of Dalian, killing all 111 people aboard. (A suicidal passenger is believed to have set the blaze).

The still-life shots showed tanks of gasoline and camp-stove propane, tins of paint and paint thinner, bullets and flares. Passengers were prohibited from carrying on any of the above, the placard said, or from failing to declare any “dangerous” items as such in checked luggage. There was a disturbing gloss, however. Some of the signs were printed solely in Chinese, often with English translation but no Uighur script.

The uniformed guards performing the body searches, on the other hand, did not discriminate. They were attentive to the point of being clinical, and there was no attempt to separate men from women, Uighur from Han Chinese. In a first for me in China, my shoes were ordered off. I felt a pinch on both ankles, a series of potches on the bum, an abrupt tug on the belt…and finally, I was done.

“We’re stricter than before, so much stricter,” mused a chatty young CAA officer posted at the gate to my plane. That much I can tell, I said, readjusting my jeans. The officer was adamant that reported attack on March 7 was true. As proof - again, by some backward twist of logic - he explained the new security measures were a direct response to it. So, I questioned, that meant that the Uighur assailants had walked down one of these very gangways with soda cans of gasoline, right? He didn’t say much more.

In Beijing, you can still buy a bottled or canned beverage once beyond the securty checks. Not so in Urumqi. At the sit-down cafe areas, the cheapest drink was a four-dollar glass mug of Lipton tea.

It’s worth noting that the service aboard flights to Xinjiang and other far-western provinces, home to the majority of China’s Muslims, caters to them in some ways but not others. The meals they hand out are generally Halal, as on my plane into Khotan. A Uighur man sitting across from me asked for one extra snack pack to take for his teenage son, who he said “really likes the airplane food”; the Chinese stewardess gave him two. He did not expect that the boxes she brought would contain ham sandwiches. Catching a whiff of the ham, the man rolled his eyes and groaned in his stilted Mandarin, “I don’t know what she’s thinking.”

Another taboo moment came a few days later, on the plane back from Khotan to Urumqi. I was seated at a diagonal from an observant older gentleman dressed in simple two-piece outfit with a skullcap and a mid-length beard. The whole trip he sat calmly in his seat, his feet crossed, his arms folded, and his eyes transfixed by one of the racier in-flight video programs I’ve ever come across in this country. First came Taiwanese pop music videos pulsing with noir love scenes, followed by a slo-mo montage of South American models. They pulled rubber cocktail dresses tight across their bodies as water bounced off their bodies, a signature move.

The airport in Khotan, expanded for civilian service in 2002, is still a tiny facility with a single waiting hall. On the drive into town, you pass nearby police, paramilitary and army installations that brood over the city. Uighurs still make up over 90 percent of the population of the prefecture as a whole, but the Uighur proportion of passenger traffic is significantly smaller at the airport. You see a mix of local entrepreneurs, employees of government companies and agencies, and the odd foreign tourist or trader. Here, unlike most other airports around China, you cannot even step foot inside without a plane ticket.

At the check-in counter, passengers have to wait for checked bags to pass X-ray inspection before they’re permitted to move on to the security check themselves. On my way out of Khotan, an officer spotted something that looked suspicious in my backpack, and asked me to come around behind the counter to open it. The item in question was just a flash disk. “If anything or anyone looks irregular, we check,” he stated. I asked if I looked suspicious. “We are dui wu bu dui ren,” he said in an officious tone, meaning, “We look at the goods, not the individual.” There would be no racial profiling here.

At its most hectic, only two commercial flights depart Khotan airport a day. Still, there was a backup at security. The Han officer checking ID's was meticulous. He deals with fewer passengers a day than almost anyone in his position in China, he told me, yet he’s as busy as any of them. He contended that airport security in Khotan, scene of a rash of Uighur separatist violence in the late 1990’s, had been this tough for years. Other reporters were told that lately it had gotten tougher .

The shortfall of Uighur-language signage was still bugging me. If authorities were convinced that Uighur splittists were plotting destruction, why not put them on watch in their own language?

In Khotan - where despite rising pressures to use official dialect in schools and official affairs, most Uighurs still don’t speak much Chinese - I asked the Han woman at the check-in counter why some security provisions weren’t posted in Uighur script. “Because we don’t have that here,” she said blankly. The reflexive answer is, to this day, one of Chinese officialdom’s more annoying habits. Switching flights in Urumqi, I put the question once more to a another Han staffer at check-in. “You’re right. There should be more Uighur,” said she said, to my surprise. “I’ll pass on your recommendation.” I doubt she did, but still.

I returned from Urumqi to Beijing on China Southern Airlines flight. It was the evening equivalent of the morning trip that, exactly one month earlier, was forced to make emergency landing in Lanzhou. We were served a Halal Chinese meal of cold duck, rolls, and a salad of carrots, celery and boiled peanuts, which actually wasn’t half-bad. It also made me very thirsty. Later, I made for the bathroom at the back of the plane. I took my digital pocket camera with me, not thinking that anyone would really notice.

Inside, on the door, I found the big ubiquitous airlines sticker noting in both Chinese and English: “No smoking in lavatory.” A smaller notice had been tacked on above it: “SMOKE DETECTOR INSTALLED IN LAVATORY.” And above that, slapped up last with scotch tape, was a third notice: “STRICTLY PROHIBITED TO MANGLE THE SMOKE DETECTOR.” I started snapping pictures, but there was turbulence, and I'm no photographer, so it took a minute or two to take a clear shot.

A stewardness was in my face when I opened the door, just about to knock. She’d been seated directly across from the lavatory, keeping stern watch over the customers using the facilities. After a little small talk, though, she let down her guard a bit.

What exactly had occurred on the morning of March 7? The stewardess, whose surname was Wu, repeated the official line. The young Uighur woman had carried a can or cans filled with gasoline to the bathroom. “She tried to light it but just couldn’t get it lit,” said Ms. Wu.

In the weeks following the March 7 incident, Xinhua said the Uighur girl confessed to a "terrorist" attempt. The talk around Beijing, which remains unconfirmed, is that she was carrying a Pakistani passport.

Ms. Wu knew nothing of this. She claimed not to know anything more outside of what she’d read in state media. To me this seemed strange, considering that colleagues of hers on the same route had supposedly overpowered the plotters. The female flight attendant who sniffed the gasoline received a reward of $17,000, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolitan Daily had reported in late March. The flight crew was a awared $57,000 in all.

Before returning to my seat, I asked Ms. Wu whether she thought the blanket ban on liquids was excessive. “This period of time is the most risky we’ve ever faced, because of the Olympics. So we have to take whatever safety measures are necessary,” she said, summing up with a typically Chinese phrase: “This is the way when there is no other way.”

Everest Torch: The Price of the Peak

2008-05-08T14:49:20Z

So they've done it. Chinese mountaineers finally raised the Olympic torch on top of Everest this morning. To get there they overcame difficulties that threatened to derail the ascent, or delay it beyond China's weather-related May 10 deadline. They sat out high winds and snowstorms that buried or destroyed their camps and rope-routes. Then they dug through fresh snow to repair equipment. This morning, they headed for the summit against a backdrop of steely clouds and blowing snow, though mercifully the wind had dropped.

Once they reached the peak, they behaved like any other summit party, though perhaps a little more solemnly, as they slapped each other on the back, and passed the torch from hand to hand. Official congratulations on state television all emphasized how they'd conquered their difficulties.

They deserve their success, but in one sense they were beaten before they started. Olympic organizers had visualized the Everest ascent as the high point of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay. It was meant to provide the most dramatic images in a relay chock-full of superlatives--the longest, the highest, the largest number of countries, runners etc.

This hasn't happened. The defining moments of the Beijing 2008 Torch Relay will forever be from London and Paris, where 'Free Tibet' protesters jostled torch bearers and police tackled demonstrators to the ground. Those pictures triggered an international online slanging match about China's place in the world. Angry young Chinese netizens bubbled with fury at what they saw as a deliberate slight to newly-confident China, while Western human rights activists jabbed away at China's short-comings.

The sight of the torch on top of Everest cannot override these events.

The staggering financial cost of the ascent will probably never be known. China has built a road to the mountain and a media center at its base, and kept at least 50 mountaineers there for two months. It has paid Nepal compensation for lost climbing revenue after persuading its tiny neighbor to close the south side of the mountain till May 10.

Happily for them, China's summiteers met their deadline. The costs to China's image have been high, though. Activists in the Tibetan Youth Congress have made clear that they viewed the Olympic preparations as a unique chance to publicize the Tibetan cause. While the riots in Lhasa no doubt had many local triggers, it's hard to believe the Olympic spotlight played no part in the initial monks' protests.

Mountaineers waiting on the Nepalese side of the mountain can now start their own ascents, but they face difficult decisions. They've already spent much of the climbing season corralled inside Everest Base Camp by the Nepalese army and police. It's not certain they'll still have enough time to get to the top before the summer monsoon arrives at the end of May, bringing heavy snow, thunder and a greater risk of avalanches. With so many teams rushing for the summit at once, the dangers are magnified.

Although the torch's Everest ascent hasn't provided the most dramatic images of China's Olympics so far, it may be the most fitting symbol. The climb epitomises the spirit of Beijing's Olympic preparations - take on a massive task, (like modernizing one's capital city), benchmark oneself as publicly as possible, and succeed at all costs. It's breathtakingly bold, maybe even admirable, to take on such a difficult task and complicate it with so much publicity. But the resultant inflexibility carries a price.

Insecurity Checks

2008-05-07T06:28:59Z

China’s so tough on terrorism, we often question its claims thereof. Events earlier this week were symptomatic of the government's credibility gap on that score. On Monday, flames engulfed a public bus in Shanghai on Monday, killing three people and injuring twelve.

The initial read from Shanghai authorities became a red herring for terrorist involvement. First the Xinhua news agency, in a short-winded dispatch, said an “explosion” started the fire. Soon Shanghai residents buzzed with speculation that Muslim Uighur “splittists” lurked behind the incident.

Many foreign media were also led to posit the worst, making prominent mention of alleged Uighur plots to undermine the Olympics that Chinese authorities say they’ve recently thwarted. Within hours, though, witnesses told outlets like the AP and LA Times they never heard the boom of a blast. The media blitz might have made a difference. By the end of the day Xinhua had revised its story to say “a fire” broke out after a passenger brought aboard unspecified “inflammable material”, thought to have been gasoline. Based on what we know now, this was just an unfortunate accident.

False alarms like this one have become commonplace the world over. But they do nothing to help the government's reputation for caginess as far as alleged terror threats are concerned. Since the 1990’s, the Uighur homeland of Xinjiang has been shaken by sporadic bombings, arson, attacks on officials, and shootouts between Chinese security forces and Uighur militants. There is evidence of Uighur guerrillas have been in cahoots with an alphabet soup of foreign-based Islamic and Uighur groups, Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda among them.

But all along, security analysts and Uighur exiles contend, China’s been padding a very thin case of organized militancy, and using it to justify heavy-duty security and religious clamps on the Uighur population. Sure, the Communist Party doesn’t catch nearly the same amount of flak internationally for its policies in Xinjiang that it does for its campaign in Tibetan regions. That’s largely because the U.S. and its allies have been bogged down in their own shadowy, assymetric battles against Islamic elements at home and abroad – and to some extent have backed Beijing’s.

Still, China has a nervous habit of sending out smoke signals of foul play without delivering much proof. The pre-Olympic rumblings in Xinjiang have cast this P.R. problem in stark relief. In the absence of verifiable accounts of raids, confessions or arrests, the most compelling proof of the threat China faces has come in the backhanded form of its countermeasures.

Analysts took note last month, for example, when a Chinese court charged that Uighur separatists from one blacklisted terrorist group had trained in camps on Pakistani soil, the first time China has so implicated its “all-weather” ally. One week later, neighboring countries announced Pakistan would buy Chinese military aid to combat terrorist activity.

The most visible move, for anyone living here, came in mid-March. Aviation authorities outlawed air travelers from carrying most any liquids or aerosols onto domestic flights, and ordered airports to tighten searches of passengers and bags. The new regulations came just a few days after word emerged that an air crew had busted Muslim Uighur passengers fixing to set an airplane ablaze.

Xinjiang's top two honchos unveiled news of the March 7 ploy two days later, at the annual National People's Congress in Beijing. They offered few details, but made the sweeping accusation that one alleged Uighur terrorist group, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, was scheming against the Olympics. Official media took a traditionally cautious approach, soft-peddling the news at face value.

Over the next couple days, The New York Times and others leaked online accounts of passengers (The Opposite End of China blogger provides a spirited roundup). In turn, Communist Party media amplified slightly. The accused Uighurs had diddled security, the Global Times reported, by emptying several soda cans and using syringes to refill them with petrol, diluting the nauseous scent with perfume. On March 7, it asserted, a 19-year old Uighur woman sneaked the cans aboard a China Southern Airlines flight from Urumqi to Beijing. She headed to the lavatory in the back of the craft, intending to set the contents of the cans aflame. But one of the stewardesses picked up the scent. The Uighur teen was subdued along with a man suspected of being her accomplice, and the plane made an emergency landing in Lanzhou.

According to what China Southern boss Liu Shaoyong told Phoenix TV a couple days later, the flight attendant found the container of flammable liquid in the trash receptacle of the bathroom. He did not explain why the Uighur girl might have left it there, whether intentionally or not (a riddle that the Telegraph's Richard Spencer soon took up on his blog).

Still, Liu saw fit to conclude, in contrast to past hijacking attempts aimed at diverting flights to Taiwan or achieving other individual motives, this incident was "obviously organized", with "political purposes, aimed at the Olympics". The Global Times - a hawkish vehicle of China's foreign policy and military establishment, published by the Communist Party flagship People's Daily - stayed on-message with the official statements to that point. It branded the incident “a well-prepared, meticulously planned, tightly coordinated, terror attack activity."

But how well-conceived could this botched ploy have been? Details trickled out piecemeal, and skepticism soon arose over how the news was first handled. Why did top Xinjiang apparatchiks who first revealed the averted "air disaster" give such vague accounts? Why did Xinhua pull its initial English-language story? Why did the plane continue on after stopping in Lanzhou? In the early going, there was an independent probe by a respected Chinese newspaper, Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend. But it appears that propaganda authorities put the kibosh on the story before the presses rolled.

The Southern Weekend report slipped out online anyway. It was promptly translated by Roland Soong, the acclaimed Hong Kong-based blogger at EastSouthWestNorth, who keeps a very reliable bead on newsrooms in Guangzhou. In the report, the Southern Weekend reporter recounted pursuing a passenger over the Internet, who gave him the following account by phone:

"After flying for about an hour, a passenger remarked that there was the smell of gasoline. The attendant also smelled it because it was too strong.

"We were flying on a Boeing 757 that day. The plane was not big, and the rest rooms were located between the first-class cabin and the economy cabin. There were more than 200 passengers. The airplane was not full, because there were two vacant rows of seats in the rear.

"I was seated towards the back, and I heard a quarrel. An Uyghur woman about 20 years old was on her feet. This Uyghur woman was seated towards the front to my right. She was probably in the fourth or fifth row of the economy-class cabin.

"A man went over there. My guess was that he was the security guard. He held the woman down and found a bottle. He removed the bottle and then escorted her to the restroom. We had no idea what was happening. There was no announcement. During the entire process, there was no chaos. It was very calm. At least I felt very calm. Someone in the rear slept through the whole thing without being aware at all.

"After noon, we began to feel that the airplane was descending. An announcement came that there was an emergency situation and the airplane was going to land at Zhongchuan Airport in the city of Lanzhou. A few minutes after that announcement, the airplane touched ground."

Incidentally, his suppressed account tracked with the second-hand version I’d heard that same week. At a dinner, by chance, I met a Han Chinese woman living in Urumqi. She had taken the identical flight to Beijing one day later, on March 8. When it was delayed from taking off without explanation, she rang a friend working as an airport official to ask what was up. Thus she was informed about the incident one day before Xinjiang bosses spoke out about it.

The Uighur teen, by her account, was an amateur. The young woman made her way to the W.C. clutching the soda cans in full view, which looked sketchy. "Who takes soda cans to the washroom?" Her accomplices were two Uighur men who started an argument in order to divert attention.

March 7 happened to be the eleventh anniversary of the bombing of a bus traveling past the leadership compound in Beijing, which was blamed on Uighur separatists. Did this source think the "terrorist" plot on the plane was as serious as the government said? "You have to understand China," she replied. “Before the Olympics, there’s no way the government would admit to this if it didn’t happen.”

The gravity of the matter was manifested most clearly in the new airport security ground rules. In April, officials followed up by prohibiting lighters and matches on planes and cracking down on liquids in express mail cargo as well. The initial ban was promulgated on March 13. There was just two days’ advance notice before it went into effect.

The haste showed. Lack of notice triggered scenes of chaos at airport security lines -- exacerbated by the fact that Tibetan rioting and protests had broken out that same weekend, propelling many foreign correspondents to Beijing's airport in a breathless rush. I wound up having two encounters with the new rules -- war against terror, Chinese-style -- in a short span of time. That's a blog for a later time.

Why China-based Journalists Carry Diamox

2008-05-06T15:04:04Z

Reading my colleague Mary's blog posting yesterday made me wonder: how many media assembled on Everest to cover the Olympic torch relay to the top are taking Diamox? On more than one occasion those little white pills have allowed me to hit the ground running (okay, maybe just walking purposefully) in Lhasa in recent years -- as opposed to setting aside at least a day, unable to work, getting used to the high altitude (okay, make that lying in bed with splitting headaches and nausea).

On my first trip to Tibet, in July 1980, I'd never heard of Diamox. And I wasn't ready to "rest for the first afternoon without leaving the hotel", as my group's official Foreign Ministry handlers advised. I was on one of the post-Mao government's first independent press tours of Tibet. We were terrifically excited to be allowed to report on the roof of the world. We'd even pitched in to pay for the transport and lodging of our own translator, Mr. Wang, the Chicago Tribune office assistant.

Instead of resting in our rooms that first day, we clamored to be allowed into the center of town, the fabled Barkhor area where the Jokhang temple is located. The officials accompanying our group refused. But they did agree to sit down at the hotel to discuss with us the following week's itinerary. We had a decidedly unappetizing lunch -- I recall that the butter had sprouted green mold, and I mistakenly thought it was blue cheese at first -- and then gathered around a coffee table to hash out the itinerary.

By this time Mr. Wang was looking a bit pale; he clutched a rubber oxygen-filled bag with the end of an attached tube stuck into one nostril. He gamely tried to keep up with his translation, but clearly felt worse and worse as the negotiations went on. He began fiddling anxiously with the oxygen tube. I thought "Hmm, he really looks green around the gills" -- at which point he vomited his lunch all over the coffee table.

The meeting ended abruptly. By this time I was feeling pretty bad myself. Head pounding, I retreated to my hotel room, dozed for the rest of the afternoon, and even slept through dinner (yup, our handlers got their wish after all). By early evening I felt fine. Turns out that by skipping dinner I had done my oxygen-starved brain a favor, since eating food draws blood to the stomach (and away from the brain), exacerbating headaches and nausea.

At very least, carrying Diamox can help a journalist make the most of his or her trip to Tibet, by reducing the "down time" required for acclimatization. Then again, the foreign correspondents on Everest have been waiting quite a while for the weather to clear so that the torch can ascend -- the one thing they have had on their hands, paradoxically, is time.

Everest Torch: Battling against Peak of Embarrassment

2008-05-05T08:19:36Z

The Olympic flame returned to mainland China over the weekend amid the sort of carnival mood that Beijing has been longing for. Although the globe-trotting torch was borne aloft in the seaside resort of Sanya by athletes, celebrities, and the CEO of trendy Nasdaq-listed website Sohu.com, however, its sister flame in Tibet seems to be going nowhere.

The torch in Tibet remains stranded on the slopes of Everest, its exact whereabouts a mystery. Bad weather over the weekend scuppered the torch team's training ascents to adjust to the altitude, and now threatens their chances of getting to the top inside China's original May 10 deadline.

High winds last week, and then heavy snow over the weekend have pinned down Chinese mountaineers for six days now, NEWSWEEK has learned. Last Tuesday, Chinese climbers who had passed the 7,000 meter-mark were forced back down to lower ground by dangerously strong winds. Then on Friday to Sunday, the mountain was pummeled by a snowstorm, causing further delays. Should the storms clear, the climbers (now waiting at 6,500 meters) will have to plough their way through fresh snow on the upper slopes, the so-called "one meter a minute" zone where every footstep demands willpower.

Torch relay organizers have acknowledged there's a problem, and are putting a brave face on it. Shao Shiwei, deputy director of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games' media department, said on Sunday the timing of the ascent looked "uncertain", according to Reuters. "It's hard to say if there will be a long delay or not, I don't have any information," he told a news conference, promising more details once the the team gets a clearer weather forecast. That seems fair enough. Less convincingly, he suggested that any setback caused by the storms was insignificant because the torch team's preparations for an ascent were still incomplete.

"Since the training, adjustments and the route fixing are integral parts of the overall mountaineering event, I think the weather conditions will not have a great effect on the final ascent," said Shao.

This is more debatable, as the mountain's weather patterns offer only a brief chance to conquer it each year. China originally asked neighboring Nepal, to close its side of Everest to other expeditions till May 10. If that deadline is missed, it will have to persuade Nepal to extend it. This may not be the toughest diplomatic challenge as Nepal has already taken extraordinary measures to assist its economically powerful neighbour. Kathmandu has closed the Nepalese side of the mountain above 6,500 meters, impounded mountaineers' satellite phones in a tent to prevent unmonitored communications, expelled journalists and sent troops and police to patrol Everest base camp. Nepalese security personnel reportedly have orders to use lethal force against protesters, according to local media.

Even if China buys more time from Nepal, time is not limitless. Everything depends on whether the summer monsoon holds off till June or arrives early. It brings massive thunderstorms and heavy snows that "will put the mountain off-limits till autumn", according to high-altitude climatologist Dr Javier Corripio from the University of Innsbruck who forecasts the weather on the major Himalayan peaks. http://www.meteoexploration.com/mountain/forecasts.htm . Nonetheless, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay conquered Everest on May 29 1953, so late ascents are possible.

Dr Corripio is cautiously optimistic, saying the torch bearers have a "a good chance of reaching the summit by May 10". He's predicting calmer winds, and thinks brewing thunderstorms will remain off to the south. If China's team is not fully acclimatized they may have to go slowly, in which case dangerous 50 kilometer-an -hour winds on Wednesday could prove a problem, breaking up an ascent which generally takes a fit, well-positioned team two days in good weather.

Whatever dangers the torch bearers face, mountaineers are predicting even greater risks for the expeditions stalled in their tents on the Nepalese South Face. Once the torch summits - if it summits - they will rush for the top in the few remaining climbing days. With scant chance to acclimatize, and a traffic jam at the top, there's a high risk of casualties. "It is a recipe for disaster", says Dr Corripio.

There are several hundred climbers stuck in Nepal's Everest Base Camp, and a further 200 tents altogether at Camps One and Two (the latter at 6,400 meters), according to MountEverest.net, a community site for mountaineers. It reports a Nepali police post has been set up at Camp Two, and says there's a soldier "doing the rounds each day with a sniper rifle" to keep potential protesters off China's side of the mountain. Last week, an American mountaineer was deported from Nepal after a Tibetan flag was found in his backpack. Even the Italian flag is banned, according to Silvio Mondinelli whose expedition was ordered to remove it from the top of their tents.

Journalists who visited the Nepalese Everest Base Camp have reported sightings of Chinese military in Nepalese villages lower down the Everest trail, and a recent airborne inspection by senior Chinese military guests in a Nepalese army helicopter. If true, then China has leaned heavily into Nepal's internal affairs to protect its Olympic pride and its sovereignty over Tibet from attention-grabbing stunts by protesters.

Meanwhile, China sought to placate international criticism of its handling of the March riots in Tibet by holding talks with envoys of Dalai Lama on Sunday. The talks sputtered to a halt after one day, rather than the original three days, but both sides have agreed to talk again. Neither see these discussions as more than exploratory, and many Western commentators doubt whether China has any serious intentions. The talks were preceded by more sharply critical editorials on the Dalai Lama in the Chinese media, but they took place, which is more than seemed possible a month ago. If they fail, the Dalai Lama's weakening hold over militants in the Tibetan Youth Congress is likely to slip further.

UPDATE: Prospects for an ascent continue to look grim. Chinese officials gave an upbeat press conference on Monday, but the weather does not yet appear to be lifting. Late on Monday the BBC's Jonah Fisher, one of the journalists at the Chinese base camp reported in his diary that "It is obvious from the snow and high winds we have been experiencing that it is unlikely that the climbers will be making an attempt on the summit anytime soon." There are signs, however, of cameras and extra climbing equipment being moved up the mountain.

Chinese Youth Not all Strident

2008-04-30T09:44:51Z

In recent weeks, shrill voices of Chinese youth criticizing the West have dominated headlines. But more moderate, thoughtful young Chinese are beginning to speak up. Here are some insights into a number of quieter -- but arguably just as important -- conversations with Chinese students, from Zhong Menglu who teaches at a prestigious Beijing university:

Many of Beijing’s university students—an educated, Internet-savvy, upwardly-mobile cross-section—disprove perceptions of Chinese as close-minded, nationalistic automatons. With new ‘Net tools, they're seeking out information from near and far in ways that earlier generations of Chinese never had the means or opportunity to do.

On average, Chinese tend to use the Web mostly for entertainment purposes (in contrast to Americans, who go online for information), reported the China Academy of Social Sciences last winter. Yet my conversations with Beijing university students in recent weeks reveal a curiosity and hunger for information that may make them exceptions to the norm. With protests and anti-Western retail boycotts making news in their country, my English-language students and other Chinese friends in Beijing are seeking some sort of “truth” to help them make sense of it all.

Anna*, a freshman English and Translation major, often becomes emotional during our after-class conversations. Our chats sometimes veer unintentionally toward Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen—the big, bad “Three ‘T’’s” foreigners are advised to avoid when talking with local Chinese. Over time, she’s come to acknowledge that she and her classmates “are all very, very confused—we just don’t know who and what to believe."

My Chinese friends and students signal a willingness to discuss even such taboo topics by encouraging me to ask them questions about these sensitive issues. Our talks reflect a diversity of opinion that I imagine was impossible prior to the ascendance of the Web as a means of circulating articles from foreign media as well as domestic content. Chinese blogs, bulletin boards and social networking programs are vibrant outlets for anonymous dialogue.

The conventional wisdom for these students is no longer simply the “party line” or what state-run Xinhua News Agency decides is worth disseminating. “We only read China Daily to see what the state says, but we know it’s all controlled and tries to make China look good, no matter what,” explains Jane, a student from the city of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province.

A self-described “politics buff,” Anna is one of several students who keeps me on my toes by diligently following up on our discussions with hours of online research. These students fact-check data, compare story biases and angles from various media, seek out new opinions. They often return with as many questions about what they read as criticisms of the discrepancies they notice between Chinese and Western media. Anna says she prefers the International Herald Tribune’s reporting over other Western outlets.

Judy -- the nickname of an enterprising student who writes for an English-language Website in preparation for her intended career as a journalist -- has been quite open in admitting her reliance on The New York Times regarding coverage of recently-jailed human rights activist Hu Jia.

Chinese censors bar domestic media from reporting independently on sensitive stories, such as the case of Hu Jia. Yet the restriction has affected Judy not at all: she simply shifted her information-gathering from domestic sources to foreign ones, without fear of monitoring or punishment. Articles about censorship and intimidation (as Newsweek reported a few weeks ago in "Repression 2.0") lead some outsiders to imagine access on the mainland is entirely hindered. But Judy is exasperated by that assumption. “All university students know how to get to Wikipedia and BBC [websites]—it’s easy!”

Case in point: my own online research skills have improved thanks to my students’ advice. It was my student Michael, of Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province, who first showed me how to use the proxy service Anonymouse to access blocked websites inside China. He also keeps me abreast of critical bloggers newly in vogue among Chinese Web users.

A Chongqing native whose studies have been funded by merit scholarships since middle school, Sally consistently probes and questions reports in all media, regardless of its provenance. However, when she first read through The New York Times’ reporting on the Three Gorges Dam (part of its award-winning “Choking on Growth” series) near her hometown, she conceded the existence of the environmental and social disasters blamed upon the Chinese government. As she puts it, “Our papers never talk about these problems, even though everyone living there knows about them.”

Like Sally, Ellie maintains a skeptical position toward all media, Chinese and Western alike. “I realize that Chinese media is controlling. But I’ve been abroad, I’ve seen the Western press—and I realize both sides are unbalanced," says Ellie, who comes from the province of Inner Mongolia. On the question of the Olympic torch protests, she believes -- like most other Chinese with whom I’ve spoken -- that Tibetans and their supporters are using the Olympics as a platform to try to get their messages out, "so people will sympathize with [their cause].”

This is a very charitable interpretation of the situation, compared with the many strident opinions from other Chinese youth I’ve personally encountered. Many of Alyssa’s friends, all of whom focus on studyling foreign languages in hopes of one day studying abroad, are so outraged with foreign press portrayals of China they're considering skipping their study-abroad plans. Several Chinese friends of mine admit they feel a new pressure to demonstrate their patriotism—hence the popular MSN outgoing message of a red heart next to “Zhongguo” (China) making the rounds.

Almost all those I interviewed feel China is being targeted unfairly. Their explanation? Western nations cast China in a negative light because they're jealous of Beijing's growth and success. Since most of those I spoke have never been outside China to experience a free press and a vibrant civil society first-hand, it is perhaps understandable that they fail to grasp the role of an independent media. As a result, they can only explain Westerners’ motivations for protesting “because that’s what their media tells them to do,” says Anna.

What's important here is the co-existence of diverse and dynamic opinions—and a rich, patchwork at that. These students are actively digging through sources, seeking reliable information to help them make up their minds. In the process, they’re coming up against new ideas and learning to be critical consumers of information.

All of which runs counter to the notion espoused by James Fallows that China’s “Great Firewall” makes “the quest for information just enough of a nuisance that people generally won’t bother.” If my chats with these university students are any indication, the quieter and more thoughtful repercussions of recent headlines may affect more young Chinese minds than we realize.

*English names have been used to protect students' identities; if their comments are not kept anonymous they might experience punishment or retaliation, given the sensitivity of some of the topics discussed.

Western Media Getting Death Threats

2008-04-29T15:25:54Z

I just heard about another journalist colleague who received an anonymous warning online which threatened not just him but also his kids. Creepy. With just 100 days to go before the 2008 Games, some Western journalists don't exactly feel welcome in the face of death threats, shrill and sometimes obscene name-calling, and criticisms of purported "bias" in Western media reporting of Tibet.

The interesting thing is this: when I tell Chinese friends that foreign reporters are getting death threats, some don't believe it and others just shrug as if to say "what can anyone do?" Even if I point out that issuing a death threat violates Chinese law, few seem to think this law needs to be enforced.

Don't get me wrong: China remains a relatively safe country to work in as a foreign reporter. That's precisely what makes the present nastiness so noticeable.

he Foreign Correspondents Club of China -- of which I'm president -- released a statement about such concerns. Here's the text:

THE FINAL COUNTDOWN:

100 Days Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Foreign Correspondents Club of China Concerned about Deteriorating Reporting Conditions

April 30, 2008 -- One hundred days before the Olympics, death threats against foreign correspondents and official statements demonizing Western media risk creating a hostile environment for foreign journalists based in China and for tens of thousands of additional media planning to cover the Games, says the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC).

At least ten foreign correspondents in China have received anonymous death threats during a campaign, on the Web and in state-run media, against alleged bias in Western media coverage of the Tibetan unrest and its aftermath.

The introduction of Olympics regulations allowing free travel and interviewing in China by foreign media between January 2007 and October 2008 represented an improvement in reporting conditions. However since March 14, the FCCC has learned of more than 50 incidents of interference in the work of international media trying to report in Tibetan communities. Foreign correspondents have been detained, prevented from conducting interviews, searched, and subjected to the confiscation or destruction of reporting materials. Authorities have intimidated Chinese sources and staff, and in some cases ordered them to inform on foreign correspondents’ activities.

“If allowed to continue, the reporting interference and hate campaigns targeting international media may poison the pre-Games atmosphere for foreign journalists,” says FCCC President Melinda Liu. “We urge government authorities to investigate the death threats, which violate Chinese law, and otherwise help create an environment in keeping with their Olympic promises.”

It’s not too late to improve conditions. The FCCC also urges:

n Nationwide implementation of the Olympic reporting regulations, including full media access to Tibet and Tibetan areas in the provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan.

n Investigation of reports of official harassment of foreign media.

n Timely issuance of press visas to foreign media planning to report in China during the Olympics period.

n Improved government transparency, especially in Olympics-related departments*.

n Guarantees that Chinese nationals who speak to foreign media will not be punished or intimidated.

n An early pledge to extend the current foreign media reporting regulations after they expire on Oct. 17, 2008.

The FCCC fully supports Beijing’s Olympics action plan, made public in 2002, to “be open in every aspect to the rest of the country and the whole world” and to “follow international standards and criteria” in the period before and during the 2008 Games. We urge Beijing to make good on these commitments at the earliest possible date.

The Foreign Correspondents Club of China

April 30, 2008

The FCCC is an independent Beijing-based organization for professional journalists, with more than 325 foreign correspondent members. For more information see http://www.fccchina.org. If you have questions, please e-mail fcccadmin@gmail.com

*APPENDIX ON OLYMPICS REPORTING CONDITIONS: Views from six sports journalists

The FCCC asked six veteran sports correspondents from six countries to comment on their experiences covering Beijing’s preparations for the Olympics. All have covered previous Games, and are currently stationed in Beijing. The reporters said that, overall, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games) propaganda officials are relatively progressive and open compared to those in most other Chinese government agencies. However, the reporters found that access to spokespersons and newsmakers remains a major obstacle. Even when authorities speak on the record, the quality of statements and data is inadequate. Compared to previous Olympics, the biggest difference is access to athletes and training camps, which some journalists said seem to be cloaked in secrecy.

OVERALL:

"Working on the Olympics is very much like doing everything else as a journalist in China. [Authorities] are suspicious about you. But I think BOCOG officials are quite progressive in some ways, and I think that some people in the foreign ministry are progressive. They want to give you as much information as possible but they can't give you enough. My general impression is: frustrating but positive." -- A reporter for a French media organization.

"In some cases, I don't think BOCOG is trying to restrict information. I think they just don't understand the process of how journalism works, and how quickly responses are needed on news stories.” -- A sports reporter who’s been in Beijing for more than a year.

"There is an ingrained suspicion of foreigners. The old view still persists: 'why should we talk to the media?'” -- A European news agency reporter.

ON ACCESS TO ATHLETES:

"Athletes are not available to the media. I have requested visits to training camps several times but have always been turned down." -- Francesco Liello, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy.

"I’ve had more access to American athletes here [in China] than to Chinese athletes." -- A reporter for a French media organization.

"Getting hold of a Liu Xiang [China’s champion hurdler] would be difficult anywhere in the world. But even if you want to talk to…a weightlifter, you have to call the sports ministry. An official passes you on to the weight-lifting department, which requests a fax, which often leads to a reply that an interview is 'not convenient.' " -- A European news agency reporter.

ON ACCESS TO OFFICIALS:

"I know who to call, but I don't get any answers." -- A European sports reporter.

"There are an adequate number of press conferences, but no valuable information is given, ever." -- Francesco Liello, La Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy.

"Even for casual inquiries, such as how many seats in a stadium, you have to go through a huge rigmarole. Very straightforward information -- like how much are they spending on the Olympics -- is almost impossible to find out.” -- A European news agency reporter.

"In Athens it was the case, too, that there were a lot of questions but not many answers. But here the information barrier is bigger and stronger. They are not used to dealing with the foreign media…They don't really have the feeling that they have to answer questions." -- A reporter for a French media organization.

ON THE QUALITY AND RELIABILITY OF DATA:

"Data varies according to department. [Some officials] mix apples and pears. BOCOG often just picks up Xinhua News Agency reports, which are unreliable. They throw around estimates. Nailing down a figure doesn't seem to be remotely important." -- A European news agency reporter.

“Veracity is very low... I don’t believe the statistics…BOCOG’s spokesmen just don’t have much credibility. I can’t verify anything.” – A sports reporter who’s been in Beijing for more than a year.