How China branded Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo a traitor

Cached:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121006244.html

© 1996-2010 The Washington Post Company

By Andrew Higgins
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 11, 2010; A08

Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland sits next to an empty chair with the Nobel medal and diploma for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo during a ceremony honouring Liu at city hall in Oslo, Norway on Friday.

HONG KONG – The magazine is banned in mainland China. So, too, is its Web site. Its editor is barred from visiting the land of his birth. Yet Chinese authorities have repeatedly cited reporting from the blacklisted publication.

“If they paid for using my work, I’d be much better off,” joked Jin Zhong, the editor of Open Magazine, a low-budget Hong Kong monthly dedicated to criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s frequent reference to a tiny media outfit it loathes is a curious byproduct of its even fiercer loathing for Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who was honored in absentia Friday as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Though sent to prison for “inciting subversion of state power,” Liu has been pilloried most harshly in China not for his alleged violations of the criminal code but for his affronts to Chinese nationalism. A slew of articles in China’s tightly controlled official media lambaste Liu as a traitor – and offer as evidence comments published in back issues of Jin’s Hong Kong magazine.

Most frequently cited in this campaign of denunciation is an interview Liu gave to the journal in 1988. Visiting Hong Kong for the first time and dazzled by the city’s prosperity, liberties and public order, Liu cracked that since the then-British colony had “become like this after 100 years of colonialism, China is so big it will of course need 300 years of colonialism. . . . I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.”

At the time, his comments attracted little notice: They were typical of the provocative irreverence that characterized debate among Chinese intellectuals before the 1989 military assault on Tiananmen Square. “Nobody paid much attention,” recalled Jin, who relegated the interview to the back of his magazine, then called Emancipation Monthly.

Today, Liu’s words have been revived by the mainland media, stirring “patriotic” attacks on the jailed literary scholar on the Internet, where criticism of the Nobel Prize – unlike praise for it – has no trouble getting past censors.

Debate over whether China can find its own uniquely Chinese path to economic and political modernization or take the road pioneered by the West has raged since the collapse of the last imperial dynasty, the Qing, in 1911. Liu, a literary critic and essayist, stands firmly at the pro-Western end of the spectrum, a position that has put him sharply at odds with China’s prevailing orthodoxy.

Over the last 30 years, the Communist Party has steadily cut its roots in Marxist dogma imported from the West and put Chinese nationalism at the center of its governing ideology.

“This is the best card they’ve got and they play it to the maximum,” said Bao Pu, a Hong Kong-based publisher whose father, a former senior Communist Party official in Beijing, was jailed in 1989 for supporting pro-democracy student protesters. Bao described efforts to paint Liu as a traitor as “ridiculous” and has published a collection of the dissident’s writings to present a more complete picture of his views. But, Bao said, branding critics of the ruling party as unpatriotic “can be very effective.”

“What on earth has Liu Xiaobo ever contributed to human peace?” thundered a recent article in the ruling party’s main mouthpiece, the People’s Daily. “Many Chinese remember that the ‘300 years of colonialism’ theory came from Liu. Contempt for Chinese culture and support for thorough Westernization have been his political stand.”

Xinhua, the state-controlled Chinese news agency, took up the same cudgel in an angry editorial. Quoting Liu’s remarks in his 1988 Hong Kong interview, the editorial asked “what qualification does someone who hails colonial history and culture have to talk big about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’?” Liu’s true goal, Xinhua said, is to “make China a servant of the West.”

Not everyone is convinced of Liu’s treachery. “I don’t believe he is advocating colonialism but only . . . a thorough change in China’s national character, system and culture,” said He Guanghua, a professor at Beijing’s Renmin University. And whatever Liu’s real views, added He, “you can’t convict him of a crime because he said these words.”

But with Chinese media barred from publishing articles written by Liu, his widely publicized remark about colonialism is about all that many Chinese know of his thinking. His less-incendiary contributions to China’s political debate have been purged by censors. Among these is “Charter 08,” a manifesto in favor of democracy that the Nobel Prize Committee cited as evidence of Liu’s “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

This filtering helps explain why a dissident whom many foreigners view as a hero is often seen in China as a tool of the West, unworthy of the Nobel Prize. In the absence of opinion polls in China on sensitive political issues, it is impossible to gauge what ordinary Chinese really think of Liu.

Jin, the editor who conducted the 1988 interview, said he has no regrets about publishing comments that have provided so much fodder for Liu’s critics in Beijing. “That’s how a free press works,” he said. But he wishes that Liu’s enemies would quote what was said in full instead of cutting out a key line that makes clear the jailed dissident’s true take on imperialism: “The age of colonialism has already passed.”

Researcher Wang Juan in Beijing contributed to this report.

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Liu awarded Peace Nobel

Cached:  http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article943681.ece

Guardian News Service

The 2010 Nobel peace prize was on Friday placed on an empty chair in Oslo’s city hall in a symbolic act to mark its award to Liu Xiaobo.

In the centrepiece of a simple, moving ceremony watched by an audience of 1,000 people, among them Norway’s king and queen and a clutch of fellow Chinese dissidents, the chairman of the Nobel committee, Thorbjoern Jagland, placed the citation and medal on a simple, blue upholstered seat on a small row of chairs to the right of the hall’s stage.

“We regret that the laureate is not present here today,” Mr. Jagland told the audience, who stood several times during the ceremony to applaud.

“He is in isolation in a prison in north-east China. Nor can the laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, or his closest relatives be here with us. No medal or diploma will therefore be presented here. This fact alone shows that the award was necessary and appropriate. We congratulate Liu Xiaobo with this year’s peace prize.” It is the first time since 1936, when the German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky was stopped by Nazi authorities from travelling to Oslo, that the peace prize has been awarded in this way. On three other occasions — Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991, Lech Walesa in 1983 and Andrei Sakharov in 1975 — family members have had to collect the prize instead.

While Liu was jailed for 11 years last year for subversion, his wife remains under house arrest, meaning no one could collect the award for him.

The decision to award the prize to Liu, a former university academic radicalised by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest — Mr. Jagland said the award was “dedicated to the lost souls of 4 June”.

In his absence, the Norwegian actor Liv Ullman spoke on Liu’s behalf, reading out extracts of his last public address, in December last year to the court which was about to jail him. Explaining his philosophy of protest, it has as a central message: “I have no enemies, and no hatred.” Several audience members wiped away tears during a section in which he described his love for Liu Xia.

The ceremony ended with a performance by a children’s choir — a request from Liu in the one message he was able to send from prison via his wife.

Related:

• China’s Tirades Against Nobel Aimed at Home Audience New York Times
• Video: Jailed in China, Dissident Liu Xiaobo Honored With Empty Chair at Nobel Ceremony PBS News Hour

Laos launches Money-Spinning Dam

Cached:  http://www.rfa.org/english/news/laos/dam-12092010165549.html

2010-12-09

Investors hail the project, but green groups say displaced residents lack ‘sustainable livelihoods.’

Landlocked Laos inaugurated a key hydroelectric dam on Thursday that will give critical revenue to the rural-based economy, but was criticized by environmentalists as having denied “sustainable livelihoods” for people relocated for the project.

The World Bank, a key financier of the project on the Nam Theun River, a tributary of the Mekong, called it a feat of engineering, a boon to conservation, and an aid to capacity building and revenue management.

More than 90 percent of electricity generated by the project, which has been operational since April, is being sold to Thailand, giving Laos a U.S. $2 billion revenue stream over the next 25 years.

The Nam Theun 2 (NT2) project is jointly owned by the government of communist Laos, Electricite de France International and Electricity Generating Public Company (Thailand).

“I have high hopes that the NT2 will protect nature, the environment, and society, and the power generated will be used for development and to improve the livelihoods of the peoples of Laos and Thailand.” said Choumaly Sayasone, the President of Laos, at the official launching.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the Managing Director of the World Bank, said the project has been “truly transformational” for Laos, which is highly reliant on foreign donors.

It showed that “large industrial projects can contribute to socially and environmentally sustainable development, and that the private sector and public sectors can work together to reduce poverty and support environmental protection,” she said.

‘Considerable’ benefits

Revenue from the project are earmarked for nationwide improvement of health and education services, and other poverty alleviation programs.

“This project is a testament to the fact that when hydropower projects are done right, in a socially and environmentally responsible manner, the benefits are considerable,” said Kunio Senga, Director-General of the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Southeast Asia Department.

Before the Nam Theun 2 project, more than half of the families in Nakai Plateau villages, where the project is located, lived in poverty, the Manila-based bank said. Child mortality rates were high, clean drinking water was scarce, and sanitation was almost non-existent, said the ADB, another of the 27 project financiers.

“Today, the vast majority of residents say they are better off than ever before,” Senga said.

Families who had to move to make way for the dam have been provided with new hardwood homes complete with electricity, clean water and sanitation facilities, the ADB said.

The transition from subsistence livelihoods, based on slash-and-burn agriculture, to a more settled agricultural market economy has not always been easy for many households, but families report their food security has notably improved since their move, the ADB said.

Call for ‘sustainable’ livelihoods

But environmentalists and some of the people affected by the project tell a different story.

Thirty-four civil society groups and individuals from 18 countries wrote to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank this week calling on them to take immediate action to ensure “sustainable livelihoods for the affected communities,” according to International Rivers, a U.S.-based watchdog.

“People on the Nakai Plateau still have no means for a sustainable livelihood, threatening their food security, as poor quality land in the resettlement sites continues to cause problems for villagers’ agriculture, the long-term production of the reservoir fisheries is in doubt, and outsiders are encroaching on the villagers’ community forest areas,” a statement said.

It said that thousands of people living downstream along the Xe Bang Fai River, a tributary of the Nam Theun River, have suffered “impaired water quality and reduced fisheries, and funding is inadequate to restore their livelihoods.”

“Even though the project was supposed to improve standards for hydropower development more generally in Laos, there is little evidence that this has happened. Projects continue to be approved without disclosing environmental impact assessments and without adequate resettlement and livelihood improvement plans,” it said.

Claims by villagers downstream that the dam had polluted the Xe Bang Fai River were denied by a Lao environmental official.

“The NT2 Dam has not polluted the Xe Bang Fai River. The Xe Bang Fai region was flooded in early October, following non-stop heavy rains. The almost mature rice harvest was rotting under water, resulting in the pollution,“ he said.

Soil quality questioned

Most of the villagers relocated by the dam project had earlier complained that the land allocated to them was not sufficient to grow rice for their families’ needs, and that the quality of the soil was not good.

As a way out, the Nam Theun 2 Company has suggested fishing as an alternative for their livelihood.

Now, some of them have made fishing in the dam reservoir their livelihood.

Khamkeut Keophila, one of the villagers, said “Now each [resettlement] village has a fishing association. The catch is sold immediately to waiting fishmongers. Supplies cannot meet demand.”

The ADB said the project had placed great emphasis on environmental management, with more than U.S. $60 million invested in downstream water quality management, “with better than expected results.”

The Nam Theun 2 Power Company is also disbursing U.S. $1 million annually for the protection of a 4,000 square kilometer (1,544 square mile) Nakai-Nam Theun Biodiversity Conservation Area.

Nam Theun 2 will release 35 times less greenhouse gases than a coal-fired power plant of equivalent size, and the biodiversity conservation area will help sequester an additional 40-60 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, the ADB said.

Reported by RFA’s Lao service. Translated by Viengsay Luangkhot. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai.

Copyright © 1998-2010 Radio Free Asia. All rights reserved.

Laos hydropower a ‘battery’ for power-hungry region

Cached:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11962210

By Guy Delauney BBC News, Laos

Hydro power should help Laos become the "battery" for this increasingly power-hungry region, the government hopes

At first glance, the vast body of water stretching across the Nakai plateau does not seem to have much in common with a set of Duracells.

Up in the hills of central Laos, it shimmers to the horizon, punctuated by treetops breaking the surface and long-tail fishing boats buzzing past.

“I think they could turn this place into a tourist attraction,” says 75 year old Kam Kong, as he untangles his nets on the edge of the water.

This postcard-perfect scene is actually the reservoir for the Nam Theun 2 dam – one of the biggest hydroelectric projects in Southeast Asia.

Its opening may mark a turning point for Laos as it hopes to move from being the sleepy, under-developed backwater of Indochina to, as its government has put it, the “battery” for this increasingly power-hungry region.

‘Resource curse’

Former farmer Kam Kong has been retrained as a fisherman and he also has a shop

As the water is released from the reservoir, it rushes downhill and into a rather utilitarian white-and-green power station, where turbines hum as they produce more than a thousand megawatts of electricity.

Pylons march across the hill into neighbouring Thailand, which is taking almost all the power produced by Nam Theun 2.

In theory, the figures should add up nicely for Laos. Revenue from the project may bring the government some $2bn over the next 25 years, a serious amount for one of the world’s least-developed countries.

According to one of the project’s backers, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Nam Theun 2 could provide almost a tenth of the national budget in a good year.

But the spectre of the so-called “resource curse” hangs over any developing country that suddenly gains a windfall from energy, with funds siphoned off by a greedy few instead of being used for the greater good.

Villagers affected

Hydropower may be preferable to the alternatives; coal, gas or nuclear power

Laos insists that is not going to happen this time, despite its low ranking on Transparency International’s “perceptions of corruption” index.

“Nam Theun 2 is business, but we need the revenue for the development of the country,” says Sivixay Soukkharath, a government worker in charge of resettling villagers affected by the dam.

“The government will give people education, healthcare and infrastructure, and it will allow us to protect the environment throughout the country.”

The financial deals Laos signed with the ADB and the World Bank to set up the $1.2bn project stipulate that revenue from the sale of electricity has to be used in this way.

There are also provisions for re-settling the 6,000 people whose villages disappeared under the reservoir – and tens of thousands more living downstream who have been affected by higher water levels.

‘Struggling to adapt’

Kam Kong used to be a farmer.

Now, like other villagers on the Nakai plateau, he has received training on how to make a living from fishing, and also runs a small shop at the edge of the reservoir.

He has no regrets about seeing his old home underwater.

Sivixay Soukkharath, a government worker in charge of resettling villagers, warns about future projects

“To be frank, I don’t miss a lot of things from the village,” he says.

“At our new place, we have roads and electricity. We can take care of ourselves now. I’m very happy.”

But other people are concerned.

Some pressure groups say that not enough has been done to make sure the displaced villagers have been given sustainable, alternative livelihoods.

One organisation, International Rivers, said that communities affected by the dam were “struggling to adapt” to changes in the environment.

It has asked the World and Asian Development Banks to hold back on financing other dams in Laos until they can guarantee the projects will not cause damage to the environment – or the people who have to make way.

Thorough assessment

But discouraging the development of hydropower projects may be a thankless task.

Click to play 

Views from the new Nam Theun 2 dam

There are at least nine in various stages of planning in Laos alone – and many more planned by other countries in the Greater Mekong sub-region.

Some propose damming the mainstream Mekong, the great river upon which millions of people rely to provide their fish catch and fertilise their rice paddies.

Nobody is sure what level of impact these dams would have if they were built.

But the Asian Development Bank says it will not consider funding any of these projects until a thorough assessment has been made.

Enormous challenge

That may not stop money coming from other sources.

Southeast Asia’s rapidly developing countries either crave electricity, or the revenue that may come from generating it.

The Nam Theun 2 stakeholders had hoped their project might serve as a model for environmentally-sensitive, socially-inclusive hydropower.

But Sivixay Soukkharath admits that future developments in Laos might not follow its example.

Even if the hydropower projects are delayed, the alternatives are hardly more palatable for environmentalists: coal, gas or nuclear power stations.

Living without electricity is, understandably, becoming increasingly unacceptable for people in this region.

Providing it in a way that is sensitive to the environment and vulnerable communities is likely to be an enormous challenge.

New Laos Dam Test for Hydropower Projects

Cached:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703766704576009053327262280.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

• DECEMBER 9, 2010, 7:04 A.M. ET

Associated Press

AFP/Getty Images This photo, taken in October, shows a part of the reservoir of the newly built Nam Theun 2 Power station in the Laotian central province of Khammouane. laosdam1209 laosdam1209

NAKAI TAI, Laos—One of Asia’s poorest countries officially inaugurated a $1.3 billion hydroelectric dam Thursday that is earning badly needed revenue and could set new global standards for limiting environmental damage and improving the lives of those displaced.

The dam in central Laos was the first major hydroelectric project supported by the World Bank after a long hiatus in the face of criticism that dams harm communities and the environment.

Activists warned that it’s too early to call the project a success, noting questions remain about the dam’s impact on water quality and fisheries and whether the resettled will be able to support themselves economically.

The prime minister of neighboring Thailand—which will buy 95% of the dam’s electricity—joined Laotian leaders and international officials in unveiling a marker at the site.

The dam, which has been operating since April, is expected to bring in $2 billion over the next 25 years, money the government has pledged to spend on reducing poverty in this landlocked nation with few resources besides its mountains and rivers.

The World Bank estimates the project will account for almost 40% of Laos’s economic growth this year.

“The idea of the Laotian government is to become the ‘battery’ of Southeast Asia, because they’ve got tremendous hydropower potential, so what we’re trying to emphasize is, please take the model and the lessons,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said after a visit to the project with The Associated Press in October.

He said that hydropower, done right, has great potential as a clean-energy source, and that the World Bank is considering further projects in Laos.

Between 1950 and the 1980s, some 35,000 large dams were built around the world, extolled as engines of economic development and a renewable energy source that doesn’t require polluting fossil fuels.

But a 12-member commission, set up by the World Bank and the World Conservation Union, issued a highly critical report in 2000, pointing out the downsides: 40 million to 80 million people displaced, an irreversible loss of aquatic life and the flooding of acres of forest and wetlands.

The commission set criteria for future projects, but its guidelines have not always been followed.

The new Laotian dam, called Nam Theun 2, holds back a 450-square kilometer reservoir on a tributary of the Mekong River. Six giant turbines pump out 1,070 megawatts of electricity.

The government and its foreign partners—power companies EDF from France and EGCO from Thailand—say social and environmental concerns are as central to the project as turbines and power lines.

“It’s a unique opportunity to set a new standard and to say that today a hydroelectric project has to take this new approach on board,” EDF’s regional director, Jean-Christophe Philbe, said.

A 4,100-square kilometer protected area has been established to safeguard flora and fauna.

Seventeen villages that had to be moved have been rebuilt. The power company has made a legally binding commitment to double the living standards of the 6,300 residents within five years.

Before resettlement, they were among the poorest of the poor. Now they have electricity, sanitation, clean water, all-weather roads and better access to schools and health care. According to the World Bank, 87% of those resettled believe life is much better than before.

“In the old village things just weren’t convenient,” said Tiea, 25, a villager whose family is doing so well that it is enlarging its new home. “It wasn’t a pretty place, the houses weren’t very nice, and we didn’t have power. In the new village we have electricity, we can see better. In the old place we had to use burning torches.”

But one activist said it isn’t clear whether the villagers can adapt to new ways of making a living.

“People get schools, new roads, new houses and health care. People are very happy with this, but the real problem is how to restore sustainable livelihoods for communities who used to rely on the natural resources, forests and fish—and now they’ve lost these natural resources,” said Ikuko Matsumoto, the Laotian program director for International Rivers, a group that has long campaigned against the dam.

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