Chinese Government

SHENZHEN, China -- At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to automatically recognize the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity. The program will start this month in a port neighborhood and then spread across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people. Most citizens will also be issued a residency card fitted with a powerful computer chip programmed by the same company.

U.S. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger will be included in a "60 Minutes" piece Sunday looking at Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, that members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence see as a threat to national security. Here's the release from CBS News with a quote from Ruppersberger:            Huawei, a global Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer already doing business in the U.S., poses a threat to national and corporate security say members of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  Those congressmen speak to Steve Kroft for a 60 MINUTES investigation to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 7 (7:30-8:30PM, ET, 7:00-8:00PM, PT)

ROME - The Roman Catholic Church and the Chinese government are actively exploring the re-establishment of diplomatic relations, with contacts between the sides warming to the point that the ailing Pope John Paul II quietly received a quasi-official Chinese delegation in the Vatican late last year. In a half-dozen meetings in Rome and Beijing, beginning in early 2004, both sides have indicated an increased willingness to yield on differences that have long divided China and the Vatican, which severed ties in 1951, people present at some of the discussions said.

It says a lot that rehearsals for Single Carrot Theatre 's latest production began back in August. "The Other Shore," by Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, presents formidable challenges. This is deep avant-garde territory, unconcerned with such niceties as plot or character, and it asks a lot of performers, who must find a way to connect with an audience while exploring complex issues of philosophy. Even at what seems to be its simplest, as when the actors play lighthearted games with rope, the play is burrowing into the questions of what makes us human, how humans make a society, how society can make humans conform or rebel.

NEW YORK - Cendana Wirasari Adiwarga sat perfectly still, her eyes shut tight as Quincy Sun dragged a toothpick soaked with fake blood across her plump left cheek. "There, all done," Sun said, appraising her handiwork. Adiwarga's smooth skin had been transformed into a garish tableau of bloody cuts and bruises. Adiwarga then rose to take her place inside a metal cage, where she planned to sit for three hours on a blustery late October morning opposite a federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan.

BEIJING - The scene was reminiscent of early 2003, just before the world learned about SARS: A small room in central Beijing, filled with journalists skeptically asking World Health Organization experts this week about a potential new health threat in China. The questions were about China's response to an outbreak of avian flu that has killed more than 5,000 migratory birds in China's far west: the weeks of delays in giving access to the WHO, the continuing delay in providing any samples of the virus that is killing the birds, the paucity of flu tests for people in the affected area, the news blackout on the subject.

BEIDAIHE, China -- Step off the train at this seedy seaside resort near Beijing and step back into old China -- the determinedly socialist one where the state ran things and ran them into the ground.Paint peels off the cracked walls of the buildings downtown, a stagnant green pool sits at the bottom of a dry water slide and the city's main clock tower always reads 4: 30. At the beachfront hotel for foreigners, the stench of dead fish rises from overflowing trash cans. The grass tennis court is dirt and weeds.

The dead not only vote; they answer the phone.If the Russian army has this much trouble in Grozny, it is hardly in shape to take Moscow.Remember when Yeltsin was a reformer?The Chinese government is getting more antsy about dissidents than ever, in case you were wondering about the state of Citizen Deng's health.

Our T-shirts will read, the `Genocide Olympics?' The question mark is there because we're still hoping that China will come around and do the right thing. But we're not giving up until they do." - MIA FARROW, actress and activist, on a new campaign to pressure the Chinese government into action on the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, a country where China is a big investor; Beijing is hosting the 2008 Summer Games

WASHINGTON - Internet giant Yahoo Inc. had to pass documents to the Chinese government that led to the conviction of a local journalist because the company must follow local laws, co-founder Jerry Yang said yesterday. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media rights group, accused Yahoo last week of helping Chinese authorities to convict Shi Tao, a reporter for the daily Dangdai Shang Bao. Tao was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for sending a Chinese government memo about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre to foreign Web sites, the group said.

China's leading dissident, Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced Friday to 11 years in prison after a court found the 53-year-old literary scholar guilty of "inciting subversion to state power" through his writings and role in Charter 08, a petition advocating human rights, free speech and an end to one-party rule. The verdict sent a signal that China's Communist Party will continue to stifle domestic political critics, especially those who seek to organize their fellow Chinese. And it provided evidence that political modernization might not go hand in hand with China's economic modernization.

BEIJING - - Polite applause and attentive smiles greeted President Barack Obama as he traveled through China, but there was no indication that his powers of persuasion budged the Chinese on key positions. To the contrary, the Chinese appeared to be digging in their heels on the issue of currency and remaining noncommittal on nuclear nonproliferation. Hours after Obama, standing side by side with Chinese President Hu Jintao in the Great Hall of the People, praised China's commitments to "move toward a more market-oriented exchange rate over time," a senior Chinese official called a news conference to defend China's policy of sustaining the yuan's position against the dollar, which helps keep the price of Chinese goods low. "We maintained a stable yuan during the financial crisis, which not only helped the global economy but also the stability of the world's financial markets," He Yafei, deputy foreign minister, said Tuesday.

Iraqi shoe hurler is set to appear before judge BAGHDAD: The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush was expected to appear before a judge today in a first step of a complex legal process that could end in a criminal trial, a government official and the reporter's brother said. Muntadhar al-Zeidi has been in custody since Sunday, when he gained folk hero status in the Arab world by throwing both shoes at Bush during a news conference in Baghdad. Bush ducked twice during the bizarre assault and was not injured.

News item: The Chinese government has backed away from a plan to restrict Internet access to foreign journalists covering the Beijing Games, but strict controls remain on Web access for Chinese nationals. My take: Don't know what the big deal is. I've heard that Chinese journalists are allowed to write anything they want, as long as they don't leave their cells. News item: Manny Ramirez was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers as part of a three-team deal that also sent Pittsburgh Pirates star Jason Bay to the Boston Red Sox. My take: Funny thing is, the Pirates think they got the best of the deal, acquiring two decent prospects from each team.

This is far too serious a topic for someone as frivolous as Mr. Flip, so let him borrow some lines from a recent column by Linda Robertson of The Miami Herald: "With less than five months to count down to the start of the Beijing Games, any hope that the Olympic rings would serve as wheels of progress for the repressive Chinese government is dying. Instead, the devalued rings will make a handy symbol for caricaturists, who can draw them to look like handcuffs. ... "The closer the Games get, the more the Chinese government cracks down on dissent.

Which company has committed the greater evil? Yahoo Inc. helped send a reporter to prison by revealing his identity to the Chinese government. Cisco Systems Inc. helps send thousands of Chinese dissidents to prison by selling sophisticated Internet surveillance technology to China. If bad press is to be the judge, the "stool pigeon" Yahoo is clearly the bigger villain. In 2004, after the Chinese government ordered the country's media not to report on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests, journalist Shi Tao used his Yahoo e-mail account to forward a government memo to a pro-democracy group.

Chinese agency indictedAfter a 17-month investigation, a federal grand jury yesterday indicted a Chinese government agency and its U.S. subsidiary on charges of evading quotas set to protect the U.S. textile and clothing industries. China exports nearly $3.9 billion in textiles to the United States annually.Accused in the indictment are the China National Textiles Import and Export Corp. of Beijing; China National's U.S. subsidiary, Chinatex America Inc. of New York City; and five individuals, two of whom were in custody.

This is far too serious a topic for someone as frivolous as Mr. Flip, so let him borrow some lines from a recent column by Linda Robertson of The Miami Herald: "With less than five months to count down to the start of the Beijing Games, any hope that the Olympic rings would serve as wheels of progress for the repressive Chinese government is dying. Instead, the devalued rings will make a handy symbol for caricaturists, who can draw them to look like handcuffs. ... "The closer the Games get, the more the Chinese government cracks down on dissent.

PARIS -- Washington and the European capitals are all preoccupied with China's economic growth and expanding international influence and activities, taken as evidence that in the not-too-distant future China will become a superpower. Washington thinks about China's becoming a military as well as economic superpower. The Europeans think about trade and economic competition. Both underestimate what it takes to become a modern industrial superpower. It requires a very high level of autonomous technological capacity, to begin with, as well as sophisticated and innovative industry to make use of it - both of which China today lacks.