So after boosting export rebates again (and again), some corners of the world are taking steps to relevel the competitive playing field. Unsurprisingly the CCP is unhappy at anything which makes them (and their state-pwn3d corporate cronies) fairly compete against others. So they trot out the predictably trite PR campaign complaining about foreign protectionism.

The Ministry of Commerce has denounced trade protectionism, saying many countries are resorting to it even as the West prepares for formal action against China's exports policy.

"Countries have announced all types of protectionist measures as the global financial crisis weighs on domestic demand and international trade," the ministry said on its website.

Maybe we can find some Randites and Panda-lickers to trot out to say that the CCP fulfilling their obligations under the WTO is irrelevant and China must be allowed to pursue whatever trade policies they wish, no matter how badly it skews the free market.

Hmmm... I get scooped by Fez-boy at Firedoglake on a China story that the Bushevik Dept of Justice was trying to hide by burying it in the middle of a report.

U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.

Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.

Doesn't it make you proud to be an American to torture minorities on behalf of and in coordination with the CCP? Especially Muslims detained as part of program that provided a reward for every foreign male "captured" with no proof of terrorist connections required?

In September of 2001, GDumbya stood on the rubble of Ground Zero with a bullhorn in hand. It was a PR coup, especially given his dazed and confused actions at the actual time of the crisis. His popularity jumped to almost universal approval after a major slump in the first nine months of his Presidency. That approval now stands at 28%

On May 14th (last Wednesday), People's Daily published this guidance to mainland media.

The circular ordered media to deliver disaster relief information to the public, send care and encouragement of the Party and the government to victims, provide information service for victims, in a bid to enhance their confidence and courage to overcome the disaster.

Local governments should take care of reporters, and support them to file in-depth stories about disaster relief work, as well as cracking down on fabricated reports.

In the time of national mourning, there can be no criticism of public relations spin disguised as disaster relief.

For those expecting justice to come to those that got rich and powerful off building sub-standard schools, this is the CCP that has never punished any Party members for the blood/AIDS scandal in Henan. This is the CCP that promoted Zhang Dejiang after the Dongzhou shootings. This is the CCP that reinstated and promoted cadres previously punished for their role in the SARS saga and coverup. This is the CCP that scapegoated a few cadres in Shanghai rather than prosecute all of the guilty in order to preserve overall Party harmony.

This is the CCP that detains its critics, especially when they publish their dissent/criticism at US-based Chinese-language web sites.

This post at OpenDemocracy on China and the PR around the Olympics seems to be making the rounds in the Greater English-language China blogosphere. There are certain things that wholly misses or conveniently glosses over.

The government can also rightly point to the fact that the whole torch-ceremony fiasco was not its idea, but a daft leftover that dated only from the previous Olympics, in 2004. And it can use its experience of the Olympics to demonstrate to Chinese people a conclusion many of them have already reached: namely, that when China eagerly embraces a western idea or product - and then actually lands it - there always seems to be a sting in the tail

Sadly, no. The Olympic Torch relay was first established in 1936 for the Berlin Olympics under Adolf Hitler. That's history, so if you want to invoke Godwin's Law on history, be my guest to put your head in the sand. The first torch relay was international. All subsequent torch relays up to Athens 2004 involved the lighting of the flame in Athens and then being flown to the host country where it was run around with most people ignoring the whole snooze. For Athens 2004, the flight from Athens to Athens would have been a little uneventful and given the anniversary nature of the 2004 Olympics, the torch relay was made international again. The cities chosen for the torch relay were all previous Olympic host cities. i.e. the Olympic torch relay was specifically related to the PR concerning the Olympics themselves.

2008's Beijing torch relay route bears no resemblance to the 2004 torch relay route. It bears no resemblance to any torch relay route since the original route, which was designed as a PR exercise to heap praise and glory upon the Third Reich.

If the Beijing Olympic Committee had chosen to fall back to the torch relay routes used for Atlanta and Los Angeles and Moscow and Melbourne and Seoul's coming out party and just flown from Athens to Beijing and paraded around the PRC, there probably wouldn't have been as much trouble. But the CCP can't resist pushing for the grand spectacular spectacular in the name of glorifying the Party and the one-party state.

When Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympics in 2001, many on all sides may well have sincerely believed that in seven years' time China would have made great progress both in human rights and in political reform. Their hopes proved unfounded, but their optimism should be no more dismissed than others' bleak (or in this case realistic) pessimism deserves to be applauded.

When Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympics they made all sorts of commitments to the IOC. Some of them dealt with freedom of the press and human rights. Was this a matter of sincerely believing that the PRC would have made great progress in human rights or did we just live in a fantasy land where governments are forced to live up to their promises? Obviously at this point, no one expects the IOC to hand back all of that money to Lenovo and Samsung and Coca-Cola and the other sponsors, so the Beijing Games go on, and the PR effort to whitewash the history of making inconvenient commitments that were never meant to be fulfilled and whitewashing the history of the torch relay routes in order to deflect criticism.

As for the Chinese citizens sitting back and looking at the Games as a commercialised corporate extravaganza, this author doesn't follow sports on the mainland much. Perhaps it'd just be best to conveniently forget now the Chinese fans' behaviour at various international football tourneys they've hosted over the last four years.

From the Hindustan Times comes a wire report with the statement by the Tibetan envoy: Talks with Beijing were frank

frank - open, sincere, or undisguised in manner or appearance

Personally I'm not seeing the statements made by the PRC's negotiators as open or sincere or undisguised. I have a hard time believing that the PRC's negotiators actually believe all of their statements on the Dalai clique being responsible for problems in Tibet. It is the CCP Party Line, but it's one of those slogans that many know how to mouth but not necessarily believe in their hearts. If the Dalai clique had been responsible, the CCP would have wheeled out the evidence immediately, but not a peep of proof to back up the steady stream of groundless invective, going all of the way up to Hu Jintao at the press conference with the Japanese Prime Minister in Tokyo.

"There were strong and divergent views on the nature and causes of the tragic events in Tibet which we expressed frankly," Gyari said.

"We rejected categorically the accusation that the Dalai Lama was instigating unrest in Tibet. Instead we made it clear that the events in Tibet were due to the wrong policies of China," he said.

The most apt comparison I can make with the PRC's stance that negotiations hinge on the Dalai Lama admitting that he was behind the violence in March in Tibet is winding back to 2002/2003 and listening to GDumbya claim that negotiations with Saddam Hussein hinged on Saddam admitting to his massive stock of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

I don't expect memos to be leaked or declassified by the CCP to prove that the CCP knows it is full of crap in the way that memos have been leaked and declassified to prove that GDumbya and lapdog Tony Blair were full of crap concerning the existence of Saddam's non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction.

But the principle is the same, create a hinge for negotiations which you know cannot possibly be met in order to ensure that the negotiations themselves never amount to anything but a fig leaf to satisfy the most willful of idiots creating international opinion.

ArsTechnica, one of the major tech blogs, covers the news that China refuses to guarantee open Internet during Olympics.

They said that while the government would be able to "guarantee as much [access] as possible," there's no way that China would turn off the Great Firewall entirely during the Games.

"China has always been very cautious when it comes to the Internet," Technology Minister Wan Gang said, according to Reuters. "I've not got any clear information about which sites will be shut or screened. But to protect the youth there are controls on some unhealthy web sites."

Wan's statement comes just over a month after the International Olympic Committee reminded China of its obligations as an Olympic host city to allow the press to report as freely as they have in the past—which usually includes full, unfettered access to the Internet.

And usually includes full, unfettered access to the residents of the country. Though China hasn't lived up to that commitment either. Or the one made on better human rights, since they've jailed folks for activities which should be legal by the PRC Constitution that might reflect badly upon the image of the Party and the Party's Olympic party.

But cue up the Panda player, as I'm sure there will be plenty of apologists crawling out of the woodwork saying that the PRC's failure to live up to their public international commitments is not a problem, since China is evolving... getting better... and that we all should just have patience with the folks habitually failing to live up to their own promises.

Just a few weeks ago, the State Intellectual Property Office said that it was cracking down on intellectual property infringement in anticipation of the Games. Is China now trying to give itself some wiggle room? Maybe, but it's not reasonable to expect that authorities will be able to nab every single violator. But given China's long and checkered history with IP enforcement, the IOC will likely be satisfied with visible, high-profile, and frequent crackdowns.

As Captain Renault would put it, "go round up the usual suspects". There is a charade on all sides that has to be maintained.

So President Hu Jintao faces the Japanese media questions on China' minority policies.

The regional autonomy for ethnic minorities is a basic political system of China, and the Chinese government will continue to abide by this system, said Chinese President Hu Jintao.

...

Hu also outlined the basic content of China's ethnic minorities policy, saying all the ethnic groups in China were equal, and the state ensured the legitimate rights and interests of all the ethnic minorities, maintained and developed a socialist ethnic relationship featured equality, unity, mutual assistance and harmony.

What Hu means is that the folks in Zhongnanhai send one of their own out to the restive conquered minority regions to enforce "autonomy" on the locals. "Autonomy" in this case means "follow the policy laid out by the heads of the CCP exactly and we may not torture you".

China Digital Times has been doing great work translating Woeser's reports on the Tibet situation. The following are from the 5th set of translations. Go over to CDT and read the whole thing and the previous posts as well. (after you finish here, right?)

Recently some people who were arrested during the March 14 Incident without any reasons were released. It is learned that they were arrested one after another after March 14. While some of them were arrested on their way home from their offices, others were arrested when they were asleep late at night. Many people were locked up in the warehouse of the railway station. Those who were tortured include: Some were forced to shoulder the instruments of torture when they were tortured, thus, those who shouldered the iron club had broken ribs; those who carried mechanical springs had their flesh cut off; those who carried electric wire lost consciousness as they were shocked, etc. Some of them were not given water to drink, so they had to drink each other’s urine, but in the end they did not even have urine to drink. Every day they were thrown a few steamed bread, and all the people would fight for them. Every four or five days they would be transferred to different places. Since they were transferred late at night, they did not where they had been.

The reports listed by Woeser conform closely to the stories that were reported 20 years ago under Hu Jintao's administration of Tibet. As for the CCP's Potemkin village presentation of a harmonious society?

In Lhasa the authorities have created the appearance of harmony. The soldiers who were on duty all took off their uniforms and dressed up as tourists to walk around everywhere. Most soldiers on guard duty changed into the police uniforms, and the same soldier would change into uniforms for ground force, armed police and policemen. The authorities also created the false appearance of the freedom for religious belief. While some work units notified their employees their place of work is to circumambulate the Potala Palace, the neighborhood committees also organized and encouraged people to go on circumambulation tour and to pay homage in Sera Monastery which has been ordered to open to the public by the authorities themselves. They rewarded these people for doing so with bonuses.

Unpossible. We've been told constantly by the highly self-proclaimed A-list English-language China bloggers for the last two months that the CCP was too inept to stage the equivalent of a professional wrestling match in Paris or hire analogues of NHL goon instigators to stir up a little violence in Lhasa, so they couldn't possibly co-ordinate something big like the Olympics or this political charade.

It is learned that recently there will be another journalist group, including foreign journalists, to visit Lhasa. In order to show that people enjoy the right to hold demonstrations freely, some work units will organize their employees to hold demonstrations, and the content for holding the demonstrations is about some trivial matters.

Distractions of complaints over trivial matters to push people away from the serious matters at hand? Unpossible. Hey look over there, a must-read by Danwei of ESWN's translation of complaints that CCTV didn't show Super Girls or Happy Boys during some pre-Olympics music spectacular spectacular. CCTV couldn't possibly have done this as ESWN has told us many times, the CCP is too inept to pull off something like this.

For those China hands who are only following the negotiations between the CCP and the Dalai Lama's envoys via the Xinhua releases, it must be nice to be so self-limiting. Meanwhile the Times of India has an extremely interesting story up on the abrupt but massive fail in Shenzhen. Sounds as if the propaganda barrage over the weekend from the CCP against the Dalai Lama was the unmoveable negotiating position of the CCP. In other words, the talks were designed to placate the Western critics rather than be actual diplomacy.

It said during the meeting officials Zhu Weiqun and Sitar told the Dalai Lama's envoys that the riots in Lhasa on March 12 had given rise to "new obstacles" for resuming contacts and consultations with the "Dalai side".

However, the government, they said, still arranged the meeting with "great patience and sincerity".

Zhu and Sitar had expressed the hope that to create conditions for the next round of contact and consultation, the Dalai side would take "credible moves to stop activities aimed at splitting China, stop plotting and inciting violence and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games", the agency said quoting sources.

Earlier the Tibetan government-in-exile based in Dharmshala had said talks between the Dalai Lama's envoys Lody Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen and Chinese officials would continue for next two-three days but the parleys failed to stretch beyound a few hours at the tight guarded state guest house.

Ha ha, charade you are.

Why doesn't the WHO's comments on EV71 and the Olympics sound reassuring?

A highly infectious virus that has killed 24 children in China is unlikely to be a threat to the Beijing Olympics, although it is too early to tell whether it has peaked, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

Who is the Director General of WHO? Dr. Margaret Chan. As HK SAR Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen so eloquently put it, she's "our girl".

Suspicion continues to surround the Chinese government's handling of disease outbreaks following allegations of a cover-up during the 2003 emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which originated in southern China and eventually killed nearly 800 people worldwide.

As the Director of Hong Kong's Department of Health during the SARS epidemic, Margaret Chan became infamous here and the target of official criticism from the Legislative Council. It is not a coincidence that she left town a few months after the end of SARS, as her public reputation here and trustworthiness were shattered beyond repair. Thankfully at the WHO, trustworthiness plays second fiddle to international politics.

I haven't noticed any news agency pick up this piece from this morning's SCMP (subscription required and I don't have one, so I'm just going off the copy browsed at a Pret). The Hong Kong Journalists Association was scheduled to hold a press discussion on freedom of speech and the press in Hong Kong today or tomorrow and Zhao Yan was supposed to be there to give a talk. Zhao Yan, if you remember, was the NY Times researcher in Beijing who helped the Times spill the beans on Jiang Zemin stepping down from his post as the head of the Central Military Commission a week in advance. Went to jail for three years on a trumped up fraud charge. Did his time and was free to come to Hong Kong to speak.

It's just that sometime between his arrival here in Hong Kong and his scheduled speaking slot, he disappeared. There are rumours that he went back to Beijing, but none of those concerned about him have been able to contact him since he went missing.

Thank Goodness the Hong Kong Police didn't follow up on that case of the mainland Security Bureau working in Hong Kong illegally a couple of years ago.

The story also states that another exiled mainland journalist that was supposed to be presenting at the talk on Freedom of Speech and the Press was deported. The Hong Kong SAR government responded that it was important to keep potential threats out of the SAR.

Glad to know that Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's boys are finally admitting that they consider the non-patriotic press to be a threat to state stability and security.

The HKJA doesn't have a statement posted on this yet, but the do have a statement up on journalist Zhang Yu, the coordinator of the Writers in Prison Committee of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, and artist Jens Galschiot.

UPDATE 1:35am
Some more here on the missing and deported journalists.

UPDATE Mon Cinco de Mayo 1:45pm
Let me update this with this article from Radio Free Asia on Zhao Yan resurfacing in Beijing.

He traveled to the United States last month and was scheduled to speak at a May 1-3 conference co-hosted by the Hong Kong Journalists' Association, International PEN, and other media groups. Hong Kong media described him last week as “missing,” and friends feared he had been abducted or detained.

“During my travels, I lost my cell phone, my clothes, and a notebook containing phone numbers. So I was unable to contact the conference organizers. I have a poor memory. I couldn’t remember the telephone numbers. I am sorry,” he said.