Chinese authorities grilled dissidents in Australian camps

AFP , SYDNEY

Officials from Beijing were allowed to interrogate Chinese held in Australian detention centers it was revealed yesterday, even as another defector said yesterday that China is using a vast network of spies in an attempt to turn Australia into a "political colony."

Former Beijing University professor Yuan Hongbing, the fourth Chinese defector to surface in Australia in the past month, supported charges by a rebel Chinese diplomat that Beijing had an extensive network of agents in the country.

The agents are targeting Chinese dissidents and are also being used to influence political thought "to turn Australia into a political colony of China," Yuan told ABC radio.

Yuan's charges came as it was reported that almost 50 Chinese people held in Australian immigration centers were put in isolation for more than two weeks last month and interrogated by Chinese government officials.

Some of the detainees were reportedly political dissidents or members of the spiritual group Falun Gong, which is banned in China.

Rights activists said the Australian government may have breached its human rights and legal obligations by allowing the interrogations.

A unificationist in Aboriginal garb

The Sino-Japanese relationship has deteriorated lately as a result of Japanese textbooks -- which critics say whitewash its war record last century -- and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Now, the resulting Chinese nationalism has also infected unification proponents in Taiwan. Afraid of antagonizing China, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou has decided to postpone a visit by Tokyo Mayor Shintaro Ishihara that was meant to promote Japanese tourist visits to Taipei.

Ma is not the only one influenced by Chinese nationalism. It has now affected independent Legislator May Chin as well. The difference is that Chin opposes both Japan and Taiwanese independence under the cover of her Aboriginal status. She has now led a group of descendants of Aboriginal soldiers who served in the Japanese army to Japan to demand that the names of Aboriginal soldiers be removed from the Yasukuni Shrine.

By the terms of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, these Taiwanese soldiers -- as well as their fellow Han servicemen -- became Japanese. They died on the battlefield for Japan, and the Japanese government, treating them as the emperor's warriors, included them in the reverence paid at the shrine. There is nothing wrong with that.

Chin's appeals are also understandable. Since Taiwan already has become an independent country, these Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese army are no longer second-rate colonial citizens of the Japanese empire. Their souls already have a motherland. If their descendants demand that the Japanese government remove their names from the Yasukuni Shrine and return them to their old homeland, the Japanese should not put up obstacles, but help them achieve their wishes.

May Chin's visit to Japan is controversial in Taiwan because everyone here knows that she is simply a pro-unification politician who often hides beneath the cloak of her Aboriginal status. It was director Ang Lee's film The Wedding Banquet that raised her to stardom. The daughter of an Aboriginal mother and Mainlander father, she had always been unwilling to reveal that she was half Aboriginal, and few people knew her background. That changed after the government relaxed the conditions for recognition of Aboriginal decent, allowing it to flow either from the maternal or the paternal line. She took her mother's maiden name to create a double-barreled surname, entered a campaign for the legislature as a recognized Aborigine and got elected with a large majority.

Since May Chin's father is a Mainlander, it's not surprising that she never fails to echo the pan-blue camp's political arguments, but she does this as though she is representing the Aboriginal community. Of course, it's not politically correct to interpret May Chin's actions based on her ethnic background. But in Taiwan, this can often prove quite a objective standard. The question is whether May Chin is qualified to speak for the Aboriginal community.

The absurdity of the situation is that many Aborigines are unaware that their ethnic identity is in danger of being usurped. For example, the Paiwan and Rukai tribes in Pingtung take the hundred-pace snake as their totem. The offspring of Mainlander veterans and Paiwan and Rukai women often opt for Aboriginal status, but when they return home for tribal festivals, the hundred-pace snake has been replaced by the Chinese dragon in their ceremonial regalia.

It is worrying to see that the totem of the Aboriginal people is being replaced by a Chinese symbol. This makes us think of Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan's recent remark that Shanghai women should marry foreigners to help spread Chinese culture around the world. That Chinese are able to advocate interracial marriage as a tool of cultural conquest is really quite frightening.

China should give in to freedom

By William Stimson

How strange that China should be undertaking such a huge military buildup, and conducting so much of it in a clandestine fashion. One wonders who it perceives to be its enemy when the whole world benefits from its new prosperity, welcomes it with open arms, scrambles to invest in its future and wants "in" on its economic miracle. Schoolchild-ren the world over are learning Mandarin. Everybody knows China is the future.

"Nobody is going to attack China," stammers the US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, apparently at a loss to understand why it is hurrying to arm itself.

Across the water from China sits peaceful little Taiwan, with its bustling democracy and free market economy -- the major engine of China's growth. How many other developing countries wish they had a Taiwan off their shore. It would be hard to calculate the extent to which Taiwan benefits China day in and day out.

How strange then that following Taiwan's disastrous earthquake a few years back, China prevented emergency relief from being flown to Taiwan over Chinese territory. At the height of the SARS episode, China blocked Taiwan's entry into the World Health Organization. A bird flu disaster looms in the region, but China continues to block Taiwan's entry into the health body.

Again and again, Taiwan has said it wants peaceful relations with China. Yet Beijing now has hundreds of missiles aimed at Taiwan. Can anyone doubt that the armada of modern ships, submarines and airplanes that China is currently amassing at such a breakneck pace is for use against Taiwan?

Every day the stories that come out of China get stranger. Recently a Chinese journalist who wrote against corruption and won an award for his probity was beaten and had some fingers hacked off. That writer will never type again. Another received a long prison sentence, just for sending an e-mail.

The Internet in China is tightly controlled. Yet no sooner did Japan announce it would come to Taiwan's assistance in the event of a Chinese attack than an anti-Japanese movement easily organized itself on China's Internet, sent out all the e-mails it wanted and staged riots across the country.

Chinese police stood idly by as demonstrators smashed Japanese property. What was it all about?

The excuse about Japan's offenses during World War II would be more believable if China hadn't itself committed those same offenses in Tibet. The excuse about the Japanese textbooks would be believable if China's textbooks didn't still omit the truth about Tibet and about Tiananmen Square. The excuse about the Japanese leader paying homage to an offensive shrine would be believable if Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) picture wasn't still prominently displayed as an object of reverence in Beijing.

Japan's commitment to defend Taiwan was the reason behind China's temper tantrum.

China has not only probed Japanese waters with its submarines but is probing weaknesses in the defense system of the US, Taiwan's chief protector. "We are smarter than you!" Chinese sites brag to the Americans. On Sept. 11, 2001, Chinese sites expressed glee over pictures of the burning towers in New York City. Earlier this year, sites in China likened the visiting US secretary of state to a "monkey" because of her African ancestry and called her "stupid." None of this was censored.

Toward any country standing in the way of its designs on Taiwan, China behaves more than like a primitive and crude barbarian than a modern civilized nation.

If we look at China's history, we can see why. Over the last 5,000 years, China has again and again been conquered by barbarians -- barbarians from the outside, and barbarians from the inside. Never once has it been ruled by its own people, like newly democratic Taiwan. This is the real threat Taiwan poses to China -- it is free.

And so long as it sits there free -- prospering, and making China prosper; thriving, and making China thrive; bristling with enterprise, and making China bristle with enterprise -- democratic Taiwan shows up the lie of China's barbarian rule and the lie of Chinese history. China wasn't made weak by foreign invaders.

It was invaded by foreigners because it was made weak by its own corrupt despots. China's weakness has been its lack of freedom. This is still true today. Where there is freedom people can speak out and put an end to corruption and the abuse of power that tear a country apart at its root.

The huge military buildup underway in China today is not to protect China and the Chinese people from any outside enemy, because China has no outside enemy. Its purpose is to protect China's rulers from the Chinese people. It is poised to strike Taiwan because Taiwan is an embodiment of the pre-eminent danger felt by those rulers. Taiwan is a shining example of Chinese people successfully governing themselves, making their own decisions, being free -- and thriving as a result. Taiwan's huge success cries out to China's tyrants something they are terrified the rest of China might hear: The people can rule themselves.

The effect of Beijing's military buildup will not be to make China strong, but to perpetuate its historical weakness. The same is true for China's ongoing inquisition against those citizens courageous enough to openly speak the truth. And the same is true for China's control of the Internet and suppression of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

All these policies perpetuate China's historical weakness. The way to strength is to confront and expose weakness, and then eliminate it. It is time for those who love China, in its military and in its government, to stop covering up China's weakness and inner corruption and to make China strong instead -- by making it free.

Instead of bullying Taiwan or trying to make a grab for it, China should be doing everything in its power to assist its successful little brother and to follow his proud example. A good first step would be for China to let the people of Taiwan themselves decide their future. Nobody in the whole world is against Taiwan being a part of China, if the Taiwanese people choose that.

If China could only bring itself to give the people of Taiwan this choice, then no matter which way the Taiwanese people decide to go, China will come away the big winner -- because it will have discovered, after 5,000 years, that its strength lies not in tyranny but in freedom.

William Stimson is a writer who lives in Taiwan.