chinabeijingmaps

Old (heard in the late 1960's) Fairfield County joke punchline...it goes with a green table cloth...(USA did not "recognize" People's Republic of China then - Taiwan was "China")
CHINA NEWS LOCATIONAL MAPS: Tainted water report (in more than one place), Muslim northwest background to unrest, earthquake zone, 2008. Typhoon 2009.

P L A N N I N G : M A P S O F C H I N A , I T S P R O V I N C E S A N D B E I J I N G

WHERE BUILDING A TRANSPORTATION NETWORK FITS IN; IF THIS DOESN'T WORK, INVEST IN THE BIG APPLE!

New York TIMES Beijing graphics;

1896 to 2008: history of the Olympics' results;

Reports from Hartford Courant sports reporter here...giving "color" or a third dimension to maps!

China and its region;

Provinces in the news; more news here.

News of growth factors: Cities; water supply.

BEIJING

Beijing region,
ring roads,
tourist map.

SHAANXI

XINJIANG

REAL ESTATE ABOUT LOCAL KNOWLEDGE, TO SOME DEGREE
Will the Chinese investors be able to pick winners? Japanese didn't do so well, in retrospect.

As Investors, Chinese Turn to New York
NYTIMES
By KIRK SEMPLE
August 10, 2011

Chinese banks have poured more than $1 billion into real estate loans in New York City in the past year. Investors from China are snapping up luxury apartments and planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on commercial and residential projects like Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. Chinese companies have signed major leases at the Empire State Building and at 1 World Trade Center, which is the centerpiece of the rebuilding at ground zero.

Investment in the city by companies and entrepreneurs from China has been surging in the last few years, recalling the boom in Japanese investment that swept the region in the 1980s and helping to buoy the local economy even as the country as a whole struggles to get out of recession.

The Chinese investments are occurring with little fanfare, in part because Chinese executives tend to shun publicity. But back home, their government is urging them to invest overseas to diversify China’s foreign-exchange holdings, develop business partnerships and improve the country’s leverage in international affairs.

Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics, which tracks commercial real estate sales, was combing through his files the other day for deals in New York City that involved Chinese investments. As the list grew longer and longer, he paused, a tone of surprise in his voice. “It’s truly amazing how much they’ve been able to do without being highlighted in public,” he said.

Delegations of Chinese officials and executives have been sweeping through the city, on a nearly weekly basis, assessing the markets, searching for office locations and meeting prospective partners and clients. Last month, officials and executives from China and the United States filled a ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria to make deals during a business conference.

“Everybody wants to come to New York because New York is the starting point for going global,” said Xue Ya, president of the China Center, a business and cultural organization that was the first tenant to sign a lease at 1 World Trade Center, where it will occupy six floors. Once established in New York, Mrs. Xue said, “you are a player.”

Even one of the region’s fastest growing construction companies is Chinese. The company, China Construction America, has won contracts on major public works projects, including the Tappan Zee and Alexander Hamilton Bridges, the No. 7 subway line extension and the $91 million Metro-North Railroad station at Yankee Stadium.

China Construction is a subsidiary of a state-controlled construction company in China. The wave of Japanese investment in the city a generation ago — epitomized by the purchase of a controlling stake in Rockefeller Center by the Mitsubishi Estate Company of Tokyo in 1989 — stirred anxiety and even xenophobia. Some New Yorkers saw it as evidence that the city and the country were losing their dominant positions.

This time, city officials are welcoming Chinese investment as a boon to the local economy. But in a report in May, the Asia Society and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars warned that on a national level, protectionist impulses and anti-China sentiment, particularly in Washington, could scare away investors.

Flush with capital from its enormous trade surpluses, China has been on an investment spree, especially in developing countries. While the size of China’s investments in the United States pales in comparison with investments by other countries, it has nevertheless been growing rapidly.

“In terms of overall flow from China into the U.S., many of us believe that it could accelerate very quickly, and it could even parallel what Japanese investment did in the mid-’80s,” said Clarence Kwan, a senior partner at Deloitte, a business services firm.

The Chinese government is acutely interested in diversifying its foreign exchange reserves beyond United States Treasuries. One sign of this is the push by Chinese state-run banks to invest their money in commercial real estate in New York City.

In one of the largest loans by a single lender in the city since 2008, the Bank of China lent $800 million late last year to refinance a building on Park Avenue housing JPMorgan Chase and Major League Baseball, analysts said. Among other deals, the Bank of China recently agreed to lend more than $250 million to refinance an office tower at 3 Columbus Circle.

Analysts, as well as American and Chinese officials, said it was hard to calculate the precise size of Chinese investment in New York, or even the number of deals with Chinese involvement, because of the complexities of international business arrangements and privacy laws. But experts said the current level of interest was only a hint of what could come.

Cong Zhong, chairman of Kingee Cultural Development Company, a conglomerate based in Beijing that makes Chinese decorative products, said he planned a foothold in North America with a flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue. “If we start from New York,” Mr. Zhong explained in a telephone interview from Beijing, “it will be easier to expand.”

Ning Yuan, president of China Construction America, said he had not faced anti-Chinese sentiment. The company, based in Jersey City, uses union workers on its projects in the city.

“So far so good,” Mr. Yuan said. “Our company has a lot of experience in the past 20 to 30 years in China. The economy in China is booming, and a lot of the construction projects have been done by our company. It’s good for the local market that we can bring our expertise.”

Chinese money is also poised to flow into the city through a federal program that offers the possibility of permanent residency to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in certain development projects.

Under this program, known as EB-5, Forest City Ratner Companies has arranged for $249 million in loans from Chinese investors for residential and office towers at Atlantic Yards, the commercial and residential project in Brooklyn that includes a new stadium for the New Jersey Nets. The developers of a hospital and hotel project in Flushing, Queens, have lined up about $30 million in financing from China, turning away scores of other interested investors, said Richard Xia, president of the firm raising the money.

Tourism from China is booming in New York as well, helping to sustain the hotel, restaurant and retail sectors. In 2010, 266,000 Chinese people visited the city, a 45 percent increase over 2009, according to NYC & Company, the city’s tourism arm.

High-end real estate agents are doing their best to accommodate the influx.

Pamela Liebman, president of the Corcoran Group, said her firm had fielded a “huge” increase in inquiries from wealthy Chinese looking for luxury residential properties, “some in the $30-million-plus range.”

“We went from zero to 200 miles per hour in six months,” she said. “This year, it’s the biggest buzz word in real estate: ‘Chinese.’ ”

Xiaolan Shang, an agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman, said that five years ago, she had very few international clients. Now, about 90 percent of her client base is Chinese — and most pay in cash.

“I’ve had people come to New York only for the weekend,” Ms. Shang recalled. “They see the apartment, they make the offer and right away they fly back to China.”

“Cash deal,” she added. “Right away.”

High-Speed Rail Poised to Transform China
NYTIMES
By KEITH BRADSHER
June 22, 2011

CHANGSHA, CHINA — Even as China prepares to open bullet train service between Beijing and Shanghai by July 1, its steadily expanding high-speed rail network is being pilloried on a scale rare among Chinese citizens and the news media.

Complaints include the system’s high costs and fares, the quality of construction and an allegation of self-dealing by a rail minister who was fired this year on grounds of corruption.

But often overlooked amid all the controversy are the very real economic benefits that the world’s most advanced fast-rail system is bringing to China, and the competitive challenges it poses for the United States and Europe.

Just as building the interstate highway system in the United States a half-century ago made modern commerce more feasible on a national scale, China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping to integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation. In China’s case, it is doing so on a much faster construction timetable and at significantly higher travel speeds than anything envisioned by the United States in the 1950s.

Work crews of as many as 100,000 people per line have built about half of the 16,000-kilometer, or 10,000-mile, network in just six years, in many cases ahead of schedule, including the Beijing-to-Shanghai line, which was originally planned to open next year. The entire system is still on course to be completed by 2020.

For the United States and Europe, the implications go beyond marveling at the pace of Communist-style civil engineering. As trains traveling 320 kilometers per hour link cities and provinces that were previously as much as 24 hours by road or rail from the entrepreneurial seacoast, China’s manufacturing might and global-export machine are likely to grow more powerful.

Zhen Qinan, a founder of the stock exchange in the coastal city of Shenzhen and the recently retired chief executive of ZK Energy, a wind turbine producer in Changsha, said that high-speed trains were making it more convenient to base businesses here in Hunan Province — a populous region that has long provided labor to the factories of the east, but whose mountain ranges have tended to isolate it from the economic mainstream.

Mr. Zhen ticked off Hunan’s economic attributes: “Land is much cheaper. Electricity is cheaper. Labor is cheaper.”

Throughout China, real estate prices and investments have risen sharply in the more than 200 inland cities that have already been connected by high-speed lines in the past three years. Businesses are flocking to these cities, now just a few hours by bullet train from China’s busiest and most international metropolises.

Meanwhile, a shift in passenger traffic to the new high-speed rail routes has freed up congested older rail lines for freight. That has allowed coal mines and shippers to switch to cheaper rail transport from costly trucks for heavy cargos.

Because of this shift, plus the further construction of freight rail lines, the tonnage hauled by China’s rail system increased in 2010 by an amount equaling the entire freight carried last year by the combined rail systems of Britain, France, Germany and Poland, according to the World Bank.

The bullet train bonanza, and the competitive challenge it poses for the West, is only likely to increase with the opening of the 1,320-kilometer Beijing-to-Shanghai line, which will create a business corridor between China’s two most dynamic cities. The Ministry of Railways plans 90 bullet trains a day in each direction.

The trains will barrel along at speeds of more than 300 kilometers per hour initially, with plans to accelerate to about 350 kilometers per hour by the summer of 2012 if the first year of operation goes smoothly.

Even at the initial speeds, the trains will take less than five hours to travel between Beijing and Shanghai. That is roughly comparable to the distance between New York and Atlanta, which takes nearly 18 hours on an Amtrak train.

China’s huge investment in high-speed rail may be instructive for the United States, whether for proponents of U.S. rail investments or critics who consider bullet trains a boondoggle.

President Barack Obama, who has proposed spending $53 billion on high-speed rail over the next six years, faced a setback in his budget deal in April with Republicans in Congress, which eliminated money for that plan this year.

Last autumn, newly elected Republican governors in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin turned down U.S. money that their Democratic predecessors had won for new rail routes, worrying that their states could end up covering most of the costs for trains that would draw few riders.

But then, high-speed rail is not universally acclaimed in China, either.

Financial regulators in Beijing have cautioned banks to monitor their rising exposure from hefty loans to the rail ministry. To pay for rapid deployment of the high-speed system, the ministry has borrowed more than 2 trillion renminbi, or more than $300 billion. It plans to invest an additional 750 billion renminbi this year, despite running losses on existing operations that it attributes mainly to rising diesel fuel costs for older lines, as well as rising interest payments.

Among the biggest beneficiaries of the high-speed rail system are companies that contribute nothing to defray its costs. Those would be freight shippers, which now have more exclusive use of the older rail lines, with fewer delays.

On the older tracks, the rail ministry has long been able to dictate that freight rates would subsidize passenger trains because the ministry owns those older tracks outright. The new, high-speed lines — passenger trains only — are owned by joint ventures between the ministry and provincial governments. That has prevented the ministry from forcing freight shippers to cross-subsidize the new high-speed services. As a result, passengers must pay much higher fares on the new trains than on the older ones.

The lack of freight subsidies is also causing concern in the rail and banking industries that the debt agreements of some joint ventures might need to be revised to extend the repayment of investment costs over more years.

The joint ventures were set up to give provincial governments an incentive to cooperate in acquiring land for the new routes. But those partnerships typically own only train stations and tracks. The land surrounding the stations often is owned by companies belonging to provincial and municipal government agencies, which have reaped windfall profits by selling such property to developers.

During a 20-minute taxi ride from a hotel in central Changsha to the high-speed rail station, a visitor counted 195 tower cranes erecting high-rise buildings.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, residential real estate prices rose faster in the first five months of this year in Changsha than in all but three other Chinese cities — all of which are also high-speed rail centers.

For ordinary citizens, meanwhile, the steep prices for high-speed train tickets have touched China’s raw nerve of rising income inequality.

“The government is just abusing the money of the common people,” said one posting on an Internet discussion forum, defying the network’s heavy censorship.

From Changsha to Guangzhou, a two-hour journey at speeds of up to 340 kilometers per hour, the one-way fare in economy class is 333 renminbi. That is comparable to a deeply discounted airfare, but expensive for a migrant worker from Hunan who might earn 1,000 renminbi to 2,500 renminbi a month in wages in the city of Guangzhou. The same trip takes nine hours on an older diesel train and costs 99 renminbi.

Chinese and foreign engineers have questioned the long-term strength of the concrete used in bridges and viaducts under contracts awarded during the term of the disgraced former rail minister, Liu Zhijun.

The rail ministry’s new leaders, brought in after the corruption investigation, contend that safety concerns are misplaced. But they have acknowledged them, along with the public anger over fares, by announcing plans to lower the top speed on many routes to 300 kilometers per hour from 350 kilometers per hour on July 1. The change will sharply reduce the amount of electricity consumed and allow officials to pass on the savings through reduced ticket prices. The speed reduction would also at least partially address safety concerns.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, several Chinese news media outlets quoted Zhou Yimin, a former deputy chief engineer at the rail ministry, as saying that China’s high-speed trains essentially used European and Japanese technology designed for safe use up to 300 kilometers per hour. The trains can be driven considerably faster, as China has been doing until now and plans to resume doing a year from now on the route from Beijing to Shanghai, but this reduces the safety margin, he said. The rail ministry had no immediate comment on Wednesday.

China has not disclosed any fatal crashes since its high-speed rail network began operations three years ago, while nearly 100,000 people a year die on Chinese roads, according to official statistics. International health experts say that the true total for road deaths is even higher.

When the Beijing-to-Shanghai line opens, it will create a north-to-south artery with links to east-to-west rail lines at two dozen stations along the way.

“It’s the network together that makes it work,” said John Scales, a rail expert in the Beijing office of the World Bank who has advised China, “knowing you can go from Shijiazhuang to Beijing and then transfer to Tianjin, so the coal guys can go to the port and conduct business with their shippers, for example.”

Already, the longer routes elsewhere appear to draw much heavier ridership. The trains, which typically carry 600 passengers, sometimes sell out despite departures every 10 or 15 minutes, particularly on Fridays but sometimes even at lunchtime in the middle of the week.

Of course, high speed is relative. First, a passenger must actually get a seat.

Zhou Junde, a migrant construction worker with a large red and green tattoo of a hawk on the right side of his neck, stood in line at the Changsha station on a recent Friday afternoon to buy a high-speed ticket to Guangzhou. But the next high-speed train was entirely sold out, and so was the next one 10 minutes after that. He would have to wait 30 minutes to board a train with a seat.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I come several hours early to get the departure I want.”

Ian Johnson contributed reporting from Beijing. Adam Century contributed research from Beijing.

Link to Three Gorges Dam story.

Plan for China’s Water Crisis Spurs Concern
NYTIMES
By EDWARD WONG
June 1, 2011

DANJIANGKOU, China — North China is dying.

A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill.

Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least six trillion gallons of water each year hundreds of miles from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.

The engineering feat, called the South-North Water Diversion Project, is China’s most ambitious attempt to subjugate nature. It would be like channeling water from the Mississippi River to meet the drinking needs of Boston, New York and Washington. Its $62 billion price tag is twice that of the Three Gorges Dam, which is the world’s largest hydroelectric project. And not unlike that project, which Chinese officials last month admitted had “urgent problems,” the water diversion scheme is increasingly mired in concerns about its cost, its environmental impact and the sacrifices poor people in the provinces are told to make for those in richer cities.

Three artificial channels from the Yangtze would transport precious water from the south, which itself is increasingly afflicted by droughts; the region is suffering its worst one in 50 years. The project’s human cost is staggering — along the middle route, which starts here in Hubei Province at a gigantic reservoir and snakes 800 miles to Beijing, about 350,000 villagers are being relocated to make way for the canal. Many are being resettled far from their homes and given low-grade farmland; in Hubei, thousands of people have been moved to the grounds of a former prison.

“Look at this dead yellow earth,” said Li Jiaying, 67, a hunched woman hobbling to her new concrete home clutching a sickle and a bundle of dry sticks for firewood. “Our old home wasn’t even being flooded for the project and we were asked to leave. No one wanted to leave.”

About 150,000 people had been resettled by this spring. Many more will follow. A recent front-page article in People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, said the project “has entered a key period of construction.”

Some Chinese scientists say the diversion could destroy the ecology of the southern rivers, making them as useless as the Yellow River. The government has neglected to do proper impact studies, they say. There are precedents in the United States. Lakes in California were damaged and destroyed when the Owens River was diverted in the early 20th century to build Los Angeles.

Here, more than 14 million people in Hubei would be affected if the project damaged the Han River, the tributary of the Yangtze where the middle route starts, said Du Yun, a geographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, the provincial capital.

Officials in provinces south of Beijing and Tianjin have privately raised objections and are haggling over water pricing and compensation; midlevel officials in water-scarce Hebei Province are frustrated that four reservoirs in their region have sent more than 775 million cubic meters, or 205 billion gallons, of water to Beijing since September 2008 in an “emergency” supplement to the middle route.

Overseers of the eastern route, which is being built alongside an ancient waterway for barges called the Grand Canal, have found that the drinking water to be brought to Tianjin from the Yangtze is so polluted that 426 sewage treatment plants have to be built; water pollution control on the route takes up 44 percent of the $5 billion investment, according to Xinhua, the official news agency. The source water from the Han River on the middle route is cleaner. But the main channel will cross 205 rivers and streams in the industrial heartland of China before reaching Beijing.

“When water comes to Beijing, there’s the danger of the water not being safe to drink,” said Dai Qing, an environmental advocate who has written critically about the Three Gorges Dam.

“I think this project is a product of the totalitarian regime in Beijing as it seeks to take away the resources of others,” she added. “I am totally opposed to this project.”

Ms. Dai and some Chinese scholars say the government should instead be limiting the population in the northern cities and encouraging water conservation.

The project’s official Web site says that the diversion “will be an important and basic facility for mitigating the existing crisis of water resources in north China” and that sufficient studies have been done. Wang Jian, a former environmental and water management official with the Beijing government and the State Council, China’s cabinet, agreed that the project “carries huge risks,” but he said there were no other options given the severity of the current water shortage.

The middle route is to start major operations in 2014, and the eastern route is expected to be operational by 2013. The lines were originally supposed to open by the 2008 Summer Olympics, but have been hobbled by myriad problems.

The diversion project was first studied in the 1950s, after Mao uttered: “Water in the south is abundant, water in the north scarce. If possible, it would be fine to borrow a little.”

In a country afflicted by severe cycles of droughts and floods and peasant rebellions that often resulted from them, control of water has always been important to Chinese rulers. Emperors sought to legitimize their rule with large-scale water projects like the Grand Canal or the irrigation system in Dujiangyan.

After the initial studies in the 1950s, the government did not look seriously again at the project until the 1990s, when north China was hit hard by droughts. In 2002, the State Council gave the green light for work to start on the middle and eastern routes; the western route, which would run at an average altitude of 10,000 to 13,000 feet across the Tibetan plateau to help irrigate the Yellow River basin, has been deemed too difficult to start for now.

Officials in Tianjin are so skeptical of the eastern route’s ability to deliver drinkable water that they are looking at desalinization as an alternative. Planners have more hope for the middle route, though the engineering is a much greater challenge — the canal has to be built entirely from scratch, with 1,774 structures constructed along its length to channel the water, since there is no pre-existing waterway like the Grand Canal to follow.

At the start of the route, the water level of the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han River has been raised 43 feet to 558 feet so that the water can flow downhill to Beijing. The government said the rising waters and a need to combat soil erosion necessitated moving 130,000 farmers last year from around the reservoir. Similar relocations are taking place all along the main channel, which runs through four provinces.

About 1,300 residents of Qingshan township have been moved to Xiangbei Farm, desolate land where a prison once stood. The villagers now live in sterile rows of yellow concrete houses 125 miles east of their abandoned ancestral homes. A government sign in the middle of the settlement says: “The land is fertile and has complete irrigation systems.”

The farmers know better. Each person is supposed to get a small plot of land free, but the soil here is well known to be exceedingly poor. The people also complain that in the government’s compensation formula, their old homes were undervalued, so many have had to pay several thousand dollars to buy new homes.

“There’s nothing here,” said Huang Jiuguo, 57. “There’s no enterprise. Our children are grown, and they need something to do.”

For three days last November, thousands of residents of a resettlement area in Qianjiang city blocked roads to protest poorly built homes and lack of promised compensation, according to a report by Radio Free Asia. Officials ordered the police to break up the rally, resulting in clashes, injuries and arrests.

Forced relocations, though, could pale next to larger fallouts from the project.

“We feel that we are still unsure how the project is going to impact on the environment, ecologies, economies and society at large,” said Mr. Du, the geographer in Wuhan, who carefully added he was not outright opposed to the project.

The central question for people in Hubei is whether the Han River, crucial to farming and industrial production hubs, will be killed to keep north China alive.

In a paper published in the Bulletin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mr. Du and two co-authors estimated that the diversion project would reduce the flow of the middle and lower stretches of the Han significantly, “leading to an uphill situation for the prevention of water pollution and ecological protection.” Though the study first appeared in 2006, the government has not altered its original plan, Mr. Du said.

Central planners decided on the amount of water to be diverted based on calculations of water flow in the Han done from the 1950s to the early 1990s; since then, the water flow has dropped, partly because of prolonged droughts, but planners have made no adjustments, Mr. Du said. The amount to be diverted is more than one-third of the annual water flow. “That will exert a huge damaging impact on the river,” he said.

The Han River is already facing enormous challenges — industries are discharging more and more pollutants, companies are dredging sand to feed construction needs in nearby cities and algal bloom has hit the river hard. The diversion of water to Beijing will add to the pressures. “If the water quality cannot be ameliorated effectively, the aquatic life populations will be further decimated,” Mr. Du and his co-authors wrote.

The diversion from the Han is necessitating more complex projects to raise water levels. One side diversion brings water from the Yangtze to the Han. Another would bring water from the Three Gorges reservoir to the Danjiangkou reservoir.

Government officials in the south are keenly aware of the changes coming to the Han. In Xiangfan, officials have shuttered some small factories like paper producers and forced others to use more nonpolluting materials, said Yun Jianli, director of the environmental advocacy group Green Han River. “The local government is very concerned about the river and impact of the diversion project,” she said.

The political conflicts are obvious. Mr. Du, a member of the provincial consultative legislature, said officials in Hubei had been in constant negotiations with officials in Beijing for compensation. In the 1990s, the central government proposed a package of water projects valued at $50 million at the time to help Hubei. After rounds of negotiations, the current proposal for supplemental water projects is estimated at more than $1 billion.

The demands of the north will not abate. Migration from rural areas means Beijing’s population is growing by one million every two years, according to an essay in China Daily written last October by Hou Dongmin, a scholar of population development at Renmin University of China. “With its dwindling water resources, Beijing cannot sustain a larger population,” Mr. Hou said. “Instead, it should make serious efforts to control the population, if not reduce it.”

Beijing has about 100 cubic meters, or 26,000 gallons, of water available per person. According to a standard adopted by the United Nations, that is a fraction of the 1,000 cubic meters, or 260,000 gallons, per person that indicates chronic water scarcity.

The planning for Beijing’s growth up to 2020 by the State Council already assumes the water diversion will work, rather than planning for growth with much less water, said Mr. Wang, the former official.

City planners see a Beijing full of golf courses, swimming pools and nearby ski slopes — the model set by the West.

“Instead of transferring water to meet the growing demand of a city, we should decide the size of a city according to how much water resources it has,” Mr. Wang said. “People’s desire for development has no end.”

China’s Instant Cities
NYTIMES
By CHRISTOPH GIELEN AND TIM DOODY
July 16, 2010, 12:40 pm

This year China will add more than 17 million people to its urban population. To house this unprecedented wave of migration from the country side, cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou are building countless high-rise residential towers at breakneck speed.

The construction sites, surrounded by concrete walls, are almost impossible to enter without a guide who knows how to get past suspicious guards. But once inside, it’s like entering a science fiction novel. Even in the middle of the night, bulldozers, cement trucks, and workers swarm the sites as muscular cranes hoist cargo to ever-greater heights. Bamboo scaffolding and mesh encase the partially built residential high-rises, giving them the appearance of gargantuan cocoons. Entire neighborhoods arise within months of groundbreaking.

This collection of photographs, entitled “Prelude,” captures the awe and foreboding one feels around these instant cities. These photographs are ecological in the classical sense of the word—”eco” meaning “home” in Greek, and “log” meaning “word”—since they create a dialogue about home, about the way infrastructure first reflects our aspirations and assumptions, and then shapes them.

Captured with a wide-angled lens and unfiltered film exposures, the construction sites appear as underworld environs, and the accordion-folded, residential high-rises of these metropolises morph into what could be never-ending circuit boards.

While these structures spring from the clash and synthesis of Adam Smith and Mao Zhedong, they also reflect the breakneck speed at which sprawl is entangling cities worldwide. The photographs, by rendering images of the home as cold and disturbing, question how the most powerful nations on earth fetishize bigger and faster growth without adequately addressing the need for sustainable economies and lifestyles. Peering into his pictures, we see space stations on a lunar landscape, a future in which the last tree on earth has long ago been uprooted.

China and its region

Provinces

I-BBC
Page last updated at 12:03 GMT, Tuesday, 7 July 2009 13:03 UK

China earthquake toll rises to 1,144
YAHOO
By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer
16 April 2010

JIEGU, China – Tibetan monks prayed Friday over hundreds of bodies at a makeshift morgue next to their monastery after powerful earthquakes destroyed the remote mountain town of Jiegu in western China and left at least 1,144 people dead.

State media on Friday reported that another 417 people remain missing — as rescuers neared the end of the 72-hour period viewed as best for finding people alive. They continued to dig for survivors in the rubble, often by hand.

The official toll was likely to climb further. Gerlai Tenzing, a red-robed monk from the Jiegu Monastery, estimated that about 1,000 bodies had been brought to a hillside clearing in the shadow of the monastery. He said a precise count was difficult because bodies continued to trickle in and some had already been taken away by family members.

Hundreds of the bodies were being prepared for a mass cremation Saturday morning. Genqiu, a 22-year-old monk, said it was impossible to perform traditional sky burials for all. Tibetan sky burials involve chopping a body into pieces and leaving it on a platform to be devoured by vultures.

"The vultures can't eat them all," said Genqiu, who like many Tibetans goes by one name.

China Central Television reported that a 13-year-old Tibetan girl was pulled from the toppled two-story Minzu Hotel on Friday after a sniffer dog alerted rescuers to her location. The girl, identified as Changli Maomu, was freed after a crane lifted a large concrete block out of the rubble, it said. Her condition was good and she was taken to a medical station for treatment, it said.

Relief workers have estimated that 70 percent to 90 percent of the town's wood-and-mud houses collapsed when the earthquakes hit Yushu county, in the western province of Qinghai, Wednesday morning. The strongest of the quakes was measured at magnitude 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration.

Xinhua reported that as of Friday evening the confirmed death toll had risen to 1,144, up from 791 in the afternoon. It said 11,477 people were injured, 1,174 severely.

Rescue spokesman Xia Xueping was cited as saying they now had more heavy equipment available — speeding up the process of recovering the dead.

Many survivors shivered through a third night outdoors as they waited for tents to arrive. Hundreds gathered on a plaza around a 50-foot (15-meter) tall statue of the mythical Tibetan King Gesar, wrapped in blankets taken from shattered homes.

Police had to intervene Friday to prevent young men from grabbing tents out of the back of a truck.

"I saw trucks almost attacked by local people because of the lack of food and shelter," said Pierre Deve, a program director at the Yushu-based community development organization Snowland Service Group. "It started yesterday, but you still see some things like this today. It's getting better. Chinese authorities are doing well."

Nonetheless, Deve said his group, which plans to distribute food, medicine, tents, clothes and bedding, was moving out of Jiegu in case things got worse.

"We want to have a place out of the city where we can communicate in a good way, protect the things we need to give to people who need them," he said.

China Central Television reported that about 40,000 tents would be in place by Saturday, enough to accommodate all survivors. Also on the way was more equipment to help probe for signs of life under the debris, it said. The tools include small cameras and microphones attached to poles that can be snaked into crevices as well as heat and motion sensors.

At one collapsed building where people were believed trapped, about 70 civilians, including three dozen Tibetan monks in crimson robes, joined rescue workers.

"One, two, three," the monks chanted as they used wooden beams to try to push away a section of collapsed wall. They later tied ropes to a slab of concrete and dragged it away.

The effort was hampered by the area's altitude, about 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), and Xinhua reported two dozen trained rescuers had to stop working because of altitude sickness. Sniffer dogs were also affected, it said.

Xinhua quoted a local education official as saying 66 children and 10 teachers had died, mostly in three schools, but more remained missing.

Thousands of students died during a massive Sichuan quake in 2008 when their poorly built schools collapsed. But unlike in Sichuan — where schools toppled as other buildings stood — nearly everything fell over in Yushu.

To underline official concern for a Tibetan area that saw anti-government protests two years ago, Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Yushu county Thursday evening to meet survivors. President Hu Jintao, in Brazil after visiting Washington, canceled scheduled stops in Venezuela and Peru to come home.

Wen, the sympathetic, grandfatherly face of the usually distant Chinese leadership, sought to provide comfort and build trust with the mostly Tibetan victims of the quake.

"The disaster you suffered is our disaster. Your suffering is our suffering. Your loss of loved ones is our loss. We mourn as you do. It breaks our hearts," Wen said in remarks repeatedly broadcast on state TV.

Wen also repeated nearly word for word the promise he made during the Sichuan earthquake: "As long as there's a glimmer of hope, we will spare no effort and never give up."

Quake in western China kills 400, buries more
YAHOO
By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer
14 April 2010

BEIJING – A series of strong earthquakes struck a mountainous Tibetan area of western China on Wednesday, killing at least 400 people and injuring more than 10,000 as houses made of mud and wood collapsed, officials said. Many more people were trapped and the toll was expected to rise.

The largest quake was recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey as magnitude 6.9. In the aftermath, panicked people, many bleeding from their wounds, flooded the streets of a Qinghai province township where most of the homes had been flattened. Students were reportedly buried inside several damaged schools.

Paramilitary police used shovels to dig through the rubble in the town, footage on state television showed. Officials said excavators were not available and with most of the roads leading to the nearest airport damaged, equipment and rescuers would have a hard time reaching the area. Hospitals were overwhelmed, many lacking even the most basic supplies, and doctors were in short supply.

Downed phone lines, strong winds and frequent aftershocks also hindered rescue efforts, said Wu Yong, commander of the local army garrison, who said the death toll "may rise further as lots of houses collapsed."

With many people forced outside, the provincial government said it was rushing 5,000 tents and 100,000 coats and blankets to the mountainous region, at around 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) -high and where night time temperatures plunge below freezing.

Workers were racing to release water from a reservoir in the disaster area where a crack had formed after the quake to prevent a flood, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

The Wednesday quake, which struck at 7:49 a.m. local time (2349 GMT, 7:49 p.m. EDT), was centered on Yushu county, in the southern part of Qinghai, near Tibet, with a population of about 100,000, mostly herders and farmers.

The USGS recorded six temblors in less than three hours, all but one registering 5.0 or higher. The China Earthquake Networks Center measured the largest quake's magnitude at 7.1. Qinghai averages more than five earthquakes a year of at least magnitude 5.0, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. They normally do not cause much damage in the sparsely populated province.

Residents fled as the ground shook, toppling houses made of mud and wood, as well as temples, gas stations, electric poles and the top of a Buddhist pagoda in a park, witnesses and state media said. The quake also triggered landslides, Xinhua said.

"Nearly all the houses made of mud and wood collapsed. There was so much dust in the air, we couldn't see anything," said Ren Yu, general manager of Yushu Hotel in Jiegu, the county's main town. "There was a lot of panic. People were crying on the streets. Some of our staff, who were reunited with their parents, were also in tears."

More than 100 guests of the hotel, which was relatively undamaged, were evacuated to open spaces such as public squares, Ren told The Associated Press by phone. After transporting guests to safety, hotel staff then helped in rescue efforts in other buildings, Ren said.

"We pulled out 70 people, but some of them died on the way to the hospital," Ren said, adding other survivors were put in tents in the hotel yard while they awaited assistance.

The death toll rose to about 400 by afternoon, according to China Central Television. Emergency official Pubucairen, who goes by only one name, was quoted as saying that the number of injured has risen to more than 10,000. The official said rescuers were treating the injured at hospitals, race tracks and sports stadiums.

President Hu Jintao sent a vice premier to supervise rescue efforts and more than 5,000 soldiers, medical workers and other rescuers were mobilized, joining 700 soldiers already on the ground, Xinhua said. A message of sympathy also came from the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of the often fervently Buddhist Tibetans who is reviled by Chinese leaders.

Yushu and its environs are among the Tibetan areas caught up in the anti-government protests that swept the region in March 2008. Tensions have simmered since, and the region has been closed to foreigners off and on.

CCTV reported that soon after the quake, troops secured banks, oil depots and caches of explosives.

Yushu was for centuries home to important Buddhist monasteries and a trading hub and gateway to central Tibet. In recent years, the government has poured investment into Yushu, opening an airport last year and building a highway to the provincial capital of Xining.

The seismically active region saw a magnitude-7.9 quake two years ago that left almost 90,000 people dead or missing in neighboring Sichuan province 400 miles (650 kilometers) away. Poor design, shoddy construction and the lax enforcement of building codes were found to be rampant.

In Jiegu, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the epicenter, the local fire brigade was trying to rescue 20 students stuck inside a school, Kang Zifu, head of the rescue team, told state television. It did not say what type of school it was.

Five students were killed and others trapped in a primary school, a teacher told Xinhua, saying morning classes had not yet started when the quake struck. Another official said students were buried at several primary schools.

More than 85 percent of houses had collapsed in Jiegu, which Tibetans call Gyegu, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing, the official Xinhua News Agency cited Zhuohuaxia, a local publicity official, as saying.

"The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries," said Zhuohuaxia, who goes by one name.

A monk named Luo Song from a monastery in Yushu county said his sister who worked at a local orphanage told him three children were sent to a hospital but the facilities lacked equipment.

"She said the hospitals are facing a lot of difficulty right now because there are no doctors, they have only bandages, they can't give injections, they can't put people on intravenous drips," the monk said by phone while on a visit to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Rural hospitals typically are not well equipped.

A local military official, Shi Huajie, told CCTV rescuers were working with limited equipment.

"The difficulty we face is that we don't have any excavators. Many of the people have been buried and our soldiers are trying to pull them out with human labor," Shi said. "It is very difficult to save people with our bare hands."

Large Oil Spill Reported in China
NYTIMES
By DAVID BARBOZA
January 4, 2010

SHANGHAI — A large oil spill in northwest China has heavily polluted a tributary of the Yellow River, and threatens to reach one of the country’s longest and most important sources of water.

China’s state-run news media said late Saturday that a “large amount” of diesel oil had leaked out of a pipeline last Thursday in Shaanxi Province.

The government has not explained why the report of the spill was not released until late Saturday. But Xinhua, the official state news agency, said the leak was caused by construction work and that a crew of 700 people was struggling to contain the damage from what Shaanxi officials said was about 150,000 liters, or about 40,000 gallons, of diesel oil.

The damaged pipeline belongs to the China National Petroleum Corporation, one of the country’s state-owned oil giants and the parent company of PetroChina. The company did not specify on Saturday exactly how much oil was spilled but said that it had shut down the pipeline. The company also said that “much of the leaked oil and polluted silt has already been taken away.” But government officials in Shaanxi province said on Saturday that oil has been detected far downstream from the leak and warned local residents not to use water in the region.

The oil pipeline, which transports oil from northwest China to central parts of the country, was damaged and released oil into the Chisui River and Wei River, a tributary of the Yellow River, according to Xinhua.

The Yellow River, which stretches for about 5,500 kilometers, or about 3,400 miles, is a source of water for approximately 140 million residents, and it also provides water to factories and farms through northern China.

In November 2005, a huge amount of toxic benzyme leaked out and damaged the Songhua River in north China’s Heilongjiang Province, cutting off water supplies for millions of residents.

Some local officials were disciplined for a delay in reporting the spill, which later created a panic among residents.

Page last updated at 01:39 GMT, Monday, 10 August 2009 02:39 UK

China evacuation as typhoon hits
Nearly one-million people have been evacuated from the coastal regions of China which are being battered by Typhoon Morakot.

Winds of up 119km/h (74mph) destroyed houses and flooded farmland.

Flights were cancelled and fishing boats recalled to shore. A small boy died when a building collapsed.

Meanwhile, in Japan nine people are reported dead in floods and landslides after Typhoon Etau brought heavy rain to the west of the country.

Eight people died in Hyogo prefecture, including one man whose car was swept away by a swollen river, and another died in neighbouring Okayama prefecture.

Another 10 people are missing.

'Treetops visible'

Chinese state media said that the sky turned completely dark in Beibi, Fujian, when Typhoon Morakot made landfall on Sunday morning.

Trees were uprooted as high winds and heavy rain lashed the coast.

Some 473,000 residents of Zhejiang province were evacuated before the typhoon struck, as well as 480,000 from Fujian, Xinhua news agency said.

In Zhejiang's Wenzhou City a four year-old child was killed when a house collapsed. Dozens of roads were said to be flooded and the city's airport was closed.

Rescuers used dinghies to reach worst-hit areas; in one area only the tops of trees were said to be showing above the floodwater.

Taiwan devastation

Earlier, Morakot dumped 250cm of rain on Taiwan as it crossed the island, washing away bridges and roads.

At least three people died in some of the worst flooding for 50 years.

In one incident, an entire hotel - empty at the time - was swept away by the waters.

At least three people were known to have died - a woman whose car went into a ditch and two men who drowned.

Thirty-one others were reported missing, Taiwan's Disaster Relief Centre said. Among them were a group reportedly washed away from a make-shift shelter in Kaohsiung in the south.

At least 10,000 people were trapped in three coastal towns, a local official in the southern county of Pingtung said.

In Chihpen, one of Taiwan's most famous hot spring resorts, a hotel collapsed after flood waters undermined its foundations.

Morakot - which means emerald in Thai - has also contributed to heavy rains in the Philippines. At least 10 people were killed in flooding and landslides in the north.

Typhoons are frequent in the region between July and September.

China Holds 718 In Xinjiang Over July Riots: Xinhua Agency
NYTIMES
By REUTERS
Filed at 8:34 a.m. ET
August 4, 2009

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police have detained 718 people suspected of involvement in deadly ethnic rioting in northwestern Xinjiang region last month, the official Xinhua agency said on Tuesday.

It was not clear if this number represented the total number of people held after the riots because the report did not mention anybody being released. Officials had previously said that more than 1,500 had been detained.

The report cited Chen Zhuangwei, head of the Public Security Bureau in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital.

Separately, state radio reported that authorities have arrested 83 suspects -- the first such formal arrests after the riots. The suspects included both Uighurs and Han Chinese, and the range of allegations spanned murder, arson, assault and disturbing social order, it added.

In Xinjiang's worst ethnic violence in decades, Uighur rioters attacked majority Han Chinese in Urumqi on July 5 after taking to the streets to protest against attacks on Uighur workers at a factory in south China in June which left two Uighurs dead. Hans in Urumqi sought revenge two days later.

Uighurs, a Turkic people who are largely Muslim and share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia, make up almost half of Xinjiang's 20 million people.

The violence left 197 people dead, mostly Han Chinese, and wounded more than 1,600, according to official figures.

Xinjiang has long been a tightly controlled hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by an economic gap between many Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han migrants who now are the majority in Urumqi.

Beijing does not want to lose its grip on a vast territory that borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, has abundant oil reserves and is China's largest natural gas-producing region..

China to Try Suspects Held After Riots
NYTIMES
By ANDREW JACOBS
August 1, 2009

BEIJING — China will begin trials in the next few weeks for suspects it accuses of playing a role in the deadly riots that shook the capital of Xinjiang region in early July, state media reported on Friday.

The English-language China Daily newspaper said officials were organizing special tribunals to weigh the fate of “a small number” of the 1,400 people who have been detained, most of them Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority whom security forces have blamed for much of the killings.

Earlier this week, the authorities arrested an additional 253 suspects, many through tips provided by residents of Urumqi, the city where the violence took place. On Thursday, the authorities published the photos of another 15 people, all but one of them Uighur, who they say had a hand in the unrest. Those who provide information leading to an arrest can collect as much as $7,350 in reward money.

“The police urge the suspects to turn themselves in,” China Daily wrote, quoting an unidentified law enforcement official. “Those who do so within 10 days will be dealt with leniently while others will be punished severely.”

In the days after the riots, the head of the Communist Party in Xinjiang was blunt about what awaits those convicted of the most serious offenses. “To those who have committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them,” said the official, Li Zhi.

The riots, the worst outbreak of ethnic strife in China’s recent history, began July 5 after protests over the deaths of Uighur factory workers in another part of China turned into a murderous rampage. The violence, which lasted three days, claimed 197 lives, most of them Han Chinese beaten to death on the streets, according to the government.

Overseas Uighur advocates, however, insist the official death toll undercounts the number of Uighurs killed both by paramilitary police and during revenge attacks by the Han that followed the initial rioting.

China has accused outsiders of instigating the unrest, heaping most of the blame on Rebiya Kadeer, the 62-year-old leader of the World Uighur Congress, which advocates self-determination for China’s 20 million Uighurs. They say Ms. Kadeer, a businesswoman who spent years in a Chinese jail before going into exile, organized the killings from her home in Washington.

In recent weeks Ms. Kadeer has been on an aggressive campaign to convince the world that her people are the primary victims of the rioting. During a visit to Japan on Wednesday, she told reporters that 10,000 people had disappeared overnight in the days following the unrest. “Where did they go?” she asked. “Were they all killed or sent somewhere? The Chinese government should disclose what happened to them.”

Her claims have infuriated China, with one official in Xinjiang describing her remarks as “completely fabricated.” Ms. Kadeer says she cannot reveal the source of her information because to do so would endanger those who provided it.

This coming week Ms. Kadeer will head to the Melbourne Film Festival in Australia, which is screening “10 Conditions of Love,” a documentary about her life. The directors of several Chinese-language films withdrew their entries in protest of the screening. Chinese diplomats have also been pressing Australia to rescind Ms.. Kadeer’s visa. So far, those efforts have come to naught.

If the trials that followed the 2008 riots in Tibet are any guide, the court hearings in Xinjiang will be swift. According to China Daily, the accused will be appointed lawyers who have “received special training,” as have the judges who will preside over the cases. Each trial will be heard by a panel of three or seven judges, and the majority opinion will prevail.

Human rights groups, however, say they have little confidence the tribunals will be fair. They expect the proceedings to be closed to the public — as are most trials in China — and they note that the defendants will not have lawyers of their own choosing.

“Without independent legal counsel, you don’t have any clue as to what evidence has been collected and through what means,” said Renee Xia, international director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, which is based in Hong Kong. “Were they tortured or coerced to confess? Trials can be speedy, but it doesn’t mean they will be fair.”

Ethnic Strife Continues as Hu Returns to China
NYTIMES
By EDWARD WONG
July 9, 2009

URUMQI, China — As northwest China’s Xinjiang Province settled into tense stillness on Wednesday after three days of deadly ethnic violence, a Communist Party leader from the region pledged to seek the death penalty for anyone behind the strife that state news reports say claimed at least 156 lives.

Li Zhi, the party boss in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital where the violence was centered, said that many suspected instigators of the riots had been arrested, and that most were students. His promise to seek the death sentence for those responsible came as China’s president Hu Jintao cut short his stay in Italy, where he had planned to attend a Group of Eight summit meeting, to return home and deal with aftermath of the riots, the worst ethnic violence in China in decades.

Mr. Hu had planned to meet with President Obama at the Italy summit to discuss climate change and other issues. China’s foreign ministry said in a written statement that he was returning to Beijing “given the current situation in Xinjiang,” where Sunday’s riots by ethnic Uighurs were followed Monday and Tuesday by reprisal attacks on the part of ethnic Hans.

The Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group, once were the majority in Xinjiang but now comprise only about half of the province’s 20 million people. In Urumqi, the provincial capital of more than two million where the violence has been centered, Uighurs are greatly outnumbered by the Han, who make up some 90 percent of China’s population.

News reports from Urumqi said up to 1,000 Han Chinese protesters gathered there on Wednesday, but Mr. Li said squads of anti-riot police and military troops had imposed calm on the city. The police and military presence on Urumqi streets was visibly beefed up on Wednesday, and helicopters clattered overhead, looking for evidence of unrest.

At a news conference, Mr. Li said that nine of the 156 known dead remained unidentified, their bodies burned too badly for families to recognize them. He did not specify the ethnicity of those who died, but one Han family member who reviewed photos of the dead, seeking to identify a relative, said in an interview that the great majority of the photographs were of Han victims.

In central Urumqi’s Uighur neighborhoods, where the bulk of the violence took place, the women whose husbands and brothers had been taken away by police spoke of mounting frustration after decades of being marginalized in their own land by a Han-dominated government and an ever-growing Han population.

“They don’t respect our lifestyle,” said one woman, a 26-year-old who gave her name as Guli. “We want our dignity. We just want fairness, and we want equality.”

A wide variety of government policies here in the western desert region of Xinjiang, a lightly populated area that covers about a sixth of China’s total landmass, has for years led many of the area’s 10 million Uighurs to believe their culture and livelihoods were under assault by the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China, according to local residents, foreign scholars and recent studies of the area.

The policies include limits on religious practice, the phasing out of Uighur-language instruction in schools and the reinforcement of better economic opportunities for the Han, from businesspeople to migrant workers.

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but Han migration, encouraged in part by government incentives, is quickly changing the demographics here: census figures show that Han made up 40 percent of the population in 2000, a huge leap over the 6 percent in 1949. Under the Chinese Communist Party, Han have always held the power in Xinjiang. Wang Lequan, the party secretary of the region, is a Han whose hard-line policies have inspired systems of control in other ethnic minority regions of China, including Tibet.

“Fundamentally, the relationship between Uighur and Han is one of colonized to colonizer,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher at Human Rights Watch who has written about policies in Xinjiang.

That dynamic may have laid the foundation for the riot on Sunday in which 156 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured when angry Uighurs attacked Han civilians and battled with security forces across the city. Government officials declined Tuesday to give an ethnic breakdown of the dead. The riot began as a protest over government handling of a brawl between Uighur and Han factory workers in southern China.

On Tuesday afternoon, thousands of Han Chinese armed with sticks, shovels, pipes and meat cleavers tried to march to the Uighur quarter to exact revenge for those Han civilians who were killed on Sunday. Paramilitary troops fired tear gas at the mob, but not before the first wave got into a brick-throwing battle with Uighurs perched on rooftops near Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting began on Sunday.

Many Han Chinese say the Uighurs, like China’s 55 other ethnic minorities, actually enjoy generous advantages under government policies. Uighur women, for example, can give birth to more than one child without having to pay a fine, unlike the Han. Uighur students have extra points added to their scores when taking the standardized tests that determine university placement.

But on issues that go to the heart of Uighur identity, the government takes a strict line, many Uighurs say.

The vast majority of Uighurs are Sunni Muslims, but the practice of Islam is tightly circumscribed. Government workers are not allowed to practice the religion. Imams cannot teach the Koran in private, and study of Arabic is allowed only at designated government schools. Two of Islam’s five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj — are also closely managed: students and government workers are compelled to eat during Ramadan, and passports of Uighurs have been confiscated to force them to join official hajj tours.

Three years ago, in its annual report on international religious freedom, the State Department singled out Xinjiang for criticism in a section on China: “Officials in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region tightly controlled religious activity, while elsewhere in the country, Muslims enjoyed greater religious freedom,” the report said.

On Tuesday, Abudurehepu, a religious leader in Xinjiang who supports the government, said at a news conference here that “our religious freedom is respected,” noting that Xinjiang had more than 2,000 mosques.

He also said that “the party and the government have been doing very well on ethnic policy, like having Uighur kids going to Uighur-language schools.”

In fact, the government is phasing out the use of the Uighur language in schools. Many Uighur parents know the importance of having their children learn Mandarin Chinese, but they are upset over the disappearance of their native language from the education system. There are some bilingual schools, but those generally relegate the Uighur language to a marginal role.

A 2009 Amnesty International report on threats to Uighur identity charts the recent history of the erosion of the Uighur language in education, beginning with a policy in the 1990s that eliminated Uighur as a language of instruction at the university level. Today, at Xinjiang University in Urumqi, only Uighur poetry classes are taught in Uighur, the report says. In 2006, the government began carrying out policies that make Chinese the main language of preschool instruction.

Since the central government adopted a “develop the west” campaign in the past decade, Xinjiang’s economy has grown quickly, and living standards on the whole have risen. But many Uighurs complain about high unemployment and the growing income gap with Han Chinese, who control the largest industries in Xinjiang: oil, agriculture and construction. They give many more contracts and jobs to other Han.

“Uighurs feel cut out of this process,” said a former resident of Kashgar, an oasis town near China’s western border where more than 200 protesters gathered on Monday.

The bingtuan, vast farms started by the military in the 1950s to employ demobilized troops, are among Xinjiang’s biggest moneymakers. But Mr. Bequelin, the human rights researcher, said more than 90 percent of employees at bingtuan were Han.

Chinese officials deny that government policies contribute to ethnic unrest. They place blame for the tensions on outside figures like the Dalai Lama or, in the case of the latest Xinjiang riots, Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur businesswoman and former political prisoner who lives in Washington.

On Tuesday, as thousands of Han armed with makeshift weapons tried to attack the Uighur quarter, Li Zhi, the party secretary of Urumqi, climbed atop a car and pleaded with them to go home.

“Strike down Rebiya!” he yelled the official.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting from Beijing. Huang Yuanxi contributed research.

XINJIANG
Chinese paramilitary police in formation disperse the crowds after the unconfirmed report of a needle attack on a boy outside the People's Square in Urumqi, Xinjiang province, China, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. Thousands of troops, backed by tanks and metal barricades, patrolled the western city of Urumqi on Saturday after five people died in protests over a series of bizarre needle attacks that China's police chief has blamed on Muslim separatists. ((AP Photo/Andy Wong))

19 August 2010 Last updated at 05:44 ET
Blast kills seven in China's Xinjiang

Seven people have been killed and 14 injured in a bomb blast in China's Xinjiang region. The explosion happened in Aksu city in the west of the remote western region. A local government spokeswoman, Hou Hanmin, said a Uighur man drove a three-wheeled vehicle carrying an explosive device into a crowd.

The man was arrested at the scene and investigations were ongoing, Ms Hou said.

Analysis
Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing

The motive behind what appears to be a bomb blast in China's western Xinjiang region is not yet clear. But many will suspect it is linked to the region's ongoing ethnic tension. There have not been many major incidents over recent months since last year's riots that left nearly 200 dead. But few people suspect the underlying ethnic problems have been solved. A visitor to Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, can instantly see the distrust between these two ethnic groups; they mostly live in separate areas.

Many of Xinjiang's mostly Muslim Uighurs complain that Han Chinese migrants are changing the nature of the region - as well as taking all the best jobs. Xinjiang's governor, speaking on Thursday before the explosion was known about, was reported to have said that the government faced a long, fierce struggle against separatism.

"It was a three-wheeled vehicle, it has an explosive device on it," she told the BBC Chinese service.

"It exploded while the three-wheeled vehicle ran into the crowd at a street intersection,"

All of the injured were local residents, she said, and four of them had suffered serious injuries. Last year deadly ethnic riots erupted in Xinjiang after tensions flared between the Muslim Uighur minority and the Han Chinese. There have also been a number of blasts in Xinjiang in the past, which the government blames on Uighur separatists. But Uighur activists and human rights groups accuse Beijing of using the issue to crack down on Uighur dissidents, who have complained that waves of Han Chinese migrants have marginalised the Uighur culture.

China has poured troops into Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia, since the unrest in July 2009 in Urumqi which left about 200 people dead.

XINJIANG UNREST

    * June 2010: Police arrest at least 10 Uighurs accused of planning attacks in Xinjiang
    * July 2009: Ethnic riots in Urumqi leave almost 200 people dead
    * Aug 2008: Two policemen killed in shoot-out with alleged militants in Kashgar
    * Aug 2008: Attackers armed with explosives and knives kill 16 Chinese soldiers in city of Kashgar

Full telecommunications, including the internet, have only recently been restored in the region. Rights group Amnesty International says more than 1,000 people have been detained in the wake of the violence.

Speaking on Thursday before the blast occurred, Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri told journalists that China faced a "long and fierce and very complicated struggle" in Xinjiang.

"Separatism in Xinjiang has a very long history, it was there in the past, it is still here now and it will continue in the future," AP news agency quoted him as saying.

Page last updated at 21:18 GMT, Monday, 6 July 2009 22:18 UK
Uighur resentment at Beijing's rule
By Michael Dillon, Historian on Islam in China

The violence in Xinjiang has not occurred completely out of the blue.

Its root cause is ethnic tension between the Turkic Muslim Uighurs and the Han Chinese. It can be traced back for decades, and even to the conquest of what is now called Xinjiang by the Manchu Qing dynasty in the 18th Century.

In the 1940s there was an independent Eastern Turkestan Republic in part of Xinjiang, and many Uighurs feel that this is their birthright. Instead, they became part of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and Xinjiang was declared one of China's autonomous regions, in deference to the fact that the majority of the population at the time was Uighur.

This autonomy is not genuine, and - although Xinjiang today has a Uighur governor - the person who wields real power is the regional secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party, Wang Lequan, who is a Han Chinese.

Inward migration

Under the rule of the Communist Party, there has been considerable economic development, but life has been made more difficult for the Uighurs over the past 20-30 years by the migration of many young and technically-qualified Han Chinese from the eastern provinces.

These new migrants are far more proficient in the Chinese language than all but a few Uighurs, and tend to be appointed to the best jobs.

Not surprisingly, this has created deep-seated resentment among the Uighurs, who view the migration of Han into Xinjiang as a plot by the government to dilute them, undermine their culture and prevent any serious resistance to Beijing's control.

More recently, young Uighurs have been encouraged to leave Xinjiang to find work in the rest of China, a process that had already been under way informally for some years.

There was particular concern at government pressure to encourage young Uighur women to move to other parts of China in search of employment - stoking fears they might end up working in bars or nightclubs or even in prostitution, without the protection of family or community.

Islam is an integral part of the life and the identity of the Uighurs of Xinjiang, and one of their major grievances against the Chinese government is the level of restriction imposed on their religious practices.

There are far fewer mosques in Xinjiang than there were before 1949, and they are subject to severe restrictions. Children under the age of 18 are not permitted to worship in the mosques, and neither are officials of the Communist Party or the government. Madrasas - religious schools - are also strictly controlled.

UIGHURS AND XINJIANG

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims
They make up about 45% of the region's population. 40% are Han Chinese
China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan
Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese
Uighurs fear erosion of traditional culture
Sporadic violence since 1991
Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen

Other Islamic institutions that were once a central part of religious life in Xinjiang have been banned, including many of the Sufi brotherhoods, which are based at the tombs of their founders and provided many welfare and other services to their members.

All religions in China are subject to control by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, but the restrictions on Islam among the Uighurs are far harsher than against most other groups, including the Hui who are also Muslims but are Chinese speakers.

This severity is a result of the association between Muslim groups and the independence movement in Xinjiang, a movement that is absolute anathema to Beijing.

There are groups within Xinjiang that support the idea of independence, but they are not allowed to do so openly because "splitting the motherland" is viewed as treason.

During the 1990s - after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Muslim states in Central Asia - there was an upsurge in open support for these "separatist" groups, culminating in huge demonstrations in the city of Ghulja in 1995 and 1997.

Beijing suppressed those demonstrations with considerable force, and activists were either forced out of Xinjiang into Central Asia and as far away as Pakistan or were obliged to go underground.

'Climate of fear'

Severe repression since the launch of a "Strike Hard" campaign in 1996 has included harsher controls on religious activity, restrictions on movement, the denial of passports and the detention of individuals suspected of support for separatists and members of their families.

This has created a climate of fear and a great deal of resentment towards the authorities and the Han Chinese.

It is surprising that this resentment has not erupted into public anger and demonstrations before now, but that is a measure of the tightness of control that Beijing has been able to exercise over Xinjiang.

There are a number of emigre Uighur organisations in Europe and the United States; in most cases they advocate genuine autonomy for the region.

In the past, Beijing has also blamed an Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement for causing unrest, although there is no evidence that this ever existed in Xinjiang.

The authorities in Beijing are unable to accept that their own policies in Xinjiang might be the cause of the conflict, and seek to blame outsiders for inciting the violence - as they do in the case of the Dalai Lama and Tibet.

Even if Uighur emigre organisations wished to provoke unrest, it would be difficult for them to do so and there are, in any case, sufficient local reasons for unrest without the need for external intervention.

Michael Dillon is the former director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Durham. He is also the author of a book entitled Xinjiang: China's Muslim Far Northwest.

City leader sacked over China protests
CT POST
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN Associated Press Writer
Updated: 09/05/2009 07:15:18 AM EDT

URUMQI, China—Chinese leaders removed the Communist Party chief of the restive western city of Urumqi on Saturday, trying to appease public anger following sometimes violent protests this week that the government worries could re-ignite deadly ethnic rioting.

The government's Xinhua News Agency, in announcing the decision, did not give a reason for the firing of Li Zhi. But protesters who marched by thousands on Thursday and Friday have demanded Li's and his boss's dismissal for failing to provide adequate public safety in the city.

A series of stabbings with hypodermic needles that the government blames on Muslim separatists touched off the protests, which left five dead, and further unnerved the city still uneasy from July rioting that killed 197, mostly members of China's Han majority attacked by Muslim Uighurs.

Trying to get control of the situation, leaders replaced Li with Zhu Hailun, who has been the party's top official in charge of law enforcement in Urumqi. Also sacked, Xinhua said, was an official in the police department for Xinjiang, China's western most region that abuts Central Asia and whose capital is Urumqi. The official's name was not released.

Besides assuaging public anger, the Chinese leadership hopes that sacking Li will alleviate calls to remove Xinjiang party secretary Wang Lequan, a member of the ruling Politburo and an ally of President Hu Jintao.

Both Li and Wang took visible roles in trying to defuse the
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protests, separately wading into crowds to meet with protesters Thursday only to be greeted with shouts to "step down."

By Saturday, thousands of troops, backed by tanks and metal barricades, patrolled Xinjiang's regional capital. Paramilitary police manned checkpoints on streets around government and Communist Party headquarters, where security forces fired tear gas Friday to disperse angry crowds of Han Chinese who say the government isn't doing enough to protect them from extremists among the native Uighur population.

Entrances to the city's Muslim quarter remained blocked by thousands of troops backed by heavy metal barricades and tanks. Traffic was barred from much of the downtown area in the city of 2.5 million, and many shops were closed.

There were no updated figures for the number of needle attacks, but unconfirmed reports of new incidents continued to spread through agitated crowds. Angry Han rushed to the southern edge of the city's central square after people said two Uighur men had attacked an 11-year-old boy. Riot police quickly cleared the area.

The needle attacks began on Aug. 20, though were not public reported until Wednesday following days of rumors. Urumqi Deputy Mayor Zhang Hong said Friday that 21 suspects have been detained, with four people indicted. He said all were Uighurs, while most victims were Han.

Local police said hospitals in Urumqi were treating 531 people who believed they were attacked, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Of those, 106 showed obvious signs of needle attacks, it said.

Details of the deaths were few, although Zhang said Friday that all occurred on Thursday, the first day of the street protests, and resulted from "small-scale clashes." He said two of those killed were "innocent," while investigations into the other three deaths were continuing.

A report in Urumqi's Morning Post on Saturday said a "small number of people became overexcited and lost control of themselves" during Thursday's demonstrations. It said casualties included police, paramilitary troops and innocent civilians, but gave no breakdown.

The World Uyghur Congress, a German-based exile group, said Han Chinese attacked more than 10 Uighurs during the two days of protests and tried to storm the Nanmen mosque on Friday but were stopped by authorities.

Chinese leaders have accused Muslim separatists of being behind both the needle attacks and July rioting, though Beijing has provided scant evidence to back up the claim. By most accounts, the July 5 riot started after police confronted peaceful Uighur protesters, who then attacked Han Chinese. Days later, Han vigilantes tore through Uighur neighborhoods to retaliate.

Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu vowed the government would speed up charging and prosecuting more than 1,200 people detained after the riots, in which the government says 197 people were killed and about 1,700 injured.

Riots engulf Chinese Uighur city
Groups of ethnic Han Chinese have marched through the city of Urumqi carrying clubs and machetes, as tension grows between ethnic groups and police.

Security forces imposed a curfew and fired tear gas to disperse the crowds, who said they were angry at violence carried out by ethnic Muslim Uighurs.

Earlier, Uighur women had rallied against the arrest of more than 1,400 people over deadly clashes on Sunday.

The two sides blame each other for the outbreak of violence.

AT THE SCENE

Quentin Sommerville, Urumqi

There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Han Chinese marching through the city with homemade weapons - steel poles, bamboo sticks.

They've been chanting that they're going to protect Xinjiang, protect themselves and their homes, and also chanting "down with Uighurs".

We've seen reinforcements of armed police arrive in the city.

Although there are still Han Chinese wandering around with weapons, many seem to have headed home.

Officials say 156 people - mostly ethnic Han Chinese - died in Sunday's violence. Uighur groups say many more have died, claiming 90% of the dead were Uighurs.

The unrest erupted when Uighur protesters attacked vehicles before turning on local Han Chinese and battling security forces in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province.

They had initially been protesting over a brawl between Uighurs and Han Chinese several weeks earlier in a toy factory thousands of miles away in Guangdong province.

On Tuesday about 200 Uighurs - mostly women - faced off against riot police to appeal for more than 1,400 people arrested over Sunday's violence to be freed.

'Heart-breaking' violence

Later hundreds of Han Chinese marched through the streets of Urumqi smashing shops and stalls belonging to Uighurs.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, in Urumqi, says some Chinese protesters were shouting "down with Uighurs" as they rampaged through the streets armed with homemade weapons.

UIGHURS AND XINJIANG

Xinjiang population is 45% Uighur, 40% Han Chinese

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims

China re-established control in 1949 after crushing short-lived state of East Turkestan

Since then, large-scale immigration of Han Chinese

Sporadic violence since 1991

Attack on 4 Aug 2008 near Kashgar kills 16 Chinese policemen

Police used loudspeakers to urge the crowd to stop and later fired tear gas, as the Han Chinese confronted groups of Uighurs.

One Chinese protester, clutching a metal bar, told the AFP news agency: "The Uighurs came to our area to smash things, now we are going to their area to beat them."

The authorities have tried to crack down on dissent since Sunday's protests, carrying out mass arrests, restricting media access and finally imposing a curfew.

One official described Sunday's unrest as the "deadliest riot since New China was founded in 1949".

Xinjiang's Communist Party chief Wang Lequan announced during a televised address that the curfew would run from 2100 until 0800.

State-run news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying any ethnic violence was "heart-breaking" and blaming "hostile forces both at home and abroad" for the trouble.

China's authorities have repeatedly claimed that exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer is stirring up trouble in the region.

But she told the BBC she was not responsible for any of the violence.

"Last time during the Tibet riots, [the Chinese government] blamed the Dalai Lama, and now with the Xinjiang riot, they are blaming me," she said.

"I will never damage the relationship between two communities and will never damage the relationship between people. For me, all human beings are equal."

Beijing region

Not the plan of Paris - that's the one with central point and roads radiating from the center. Manhattan is a grid. Brooklyn and Queens are more like China and Paris. And the Bronx ("borough of parks") is like...Weston?

TOURIST MAP OF BEIJING

ALL OLYMPICS HARTFORD COURANT COLUMNS HERE

Diana Taurasi, front, and, from left, Katie Smith, Sue Bird and Tamika Catchings satisfy their appetite for Olympic gold in a 92-65 victory over Australia. (QUINN ROONEY / GETTY IMAGES / August 23, 2008)

U.S. Women Win Fourth Straight Gold
U.S. Maintains Olympic Dominance
Hartford Courant
Jeff Jacobs
August 24, 2008

BEIJING — The decisive moment in this fourth successive Olympic gold rush didn't come after the wheels touched down in China. It didn't arrive when the Americans fell behind by seven points late in the first half of the semifinals against Russia.

And it didn't come hand-wrapped with an inspired locker room speech Saturday night before the gold medal game against Australia.

"The moment for this team was the first minute of the first meeting at Stanford," U.S. assistant coach Mike Thibault said after a 92-65 rout that left no doubt about which is the premier women's basketball team in the world. "When the whole team got together, Anne Donovan said you have to buy into how we're going to play defensively if you want to win the gold."

Donovan's presentation, Thibault said, was a strong one. The Team USA head coach unleashed some graphic videotape on the greatest group of female basketball players ever assembled. Some of it was flattering. Some of it wasn't. Donovan showed video of the U.S. playing well defensively in the 2006 world championships. And she showed video of the team playing poor defense in that tournament, where the U.S. lost by seven to the Russians in the semifinals.

"It was out there stark naked for people to see," Thibault said.

Two years of heartache. That's what Sue Bird called the aftermath of the Russian loss. Two years of heartache that would end half a world away with a commitment.

"Anne challenged us from day one," Bird said. "She wanted us to be the best defensive team in the tournament."

The Aussies, like the Americans, had rolled into the finals undefeated and this was their chance to show the world something at the Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. They had prepared mightily for this moment. They knew this was their chance to avenge gold medal game losses in Sydney and Athens. The American coaching staff knew Lauren Jackson and the Opals would be the best offensive opponent they would face.

Well, they shot 19-for-76. That's right. The Aussies shot 25 percent. And if you consider they scored 18 points on second chances, you begin to understand how badly their offensive sets were snuffed.

"They struggled with everything they got," Thibault said.

"It seemed the only points they got came off offensive rebounds," Bird said.

"They put us under the heat," Australia coach Jan Stirling said, "and we were unable to handle it."

Yet in the end, after 12 gold medals were hung around 12 American necks, even something as tangible as terrific defense would come to stand as a metaphor for a greater calling. That's because the deepest team in women's basketball history also may have been the most unselfish.

"I've never been around a team that's been more selfless," Donovan said. "There never was a question the open player would get the shot. There never was a question that we were committed to defending, which was a problem in 2006."

Lisa Leslie, Tina Thompson, Candace Parker, Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles, Diana Taurasi ... on and on. With all this talent, they could have gone solo. They didn't. Team USA won eight games by an average of 38.8 points and each game seemed to see different players lead the Americans in scoring. On this night, with Taurasi in foul trouble, it was Kara Lawson with 15. Parker had 14.

"It's scary how deep we are," Taurasi said. "You don't notice it against the bad teams, but against the good teams we go 8-9-10-11-12. It really wears on a team."

"I just don't think there ever has been a team with this depth," Bird said. "No matter who is on the court there is no letdown whatsoever. How many teams could have their No. 2 and 3 guards go out with foul trouble and build a 20-point first-half lead? Then Lisa Leslie fouled out and my initial reaction was, [oh, no], but Sylvia Fowles runs in and everything is OK.

"I just don't think we could have played better. I feel so fulfilled."

And so does Diana.

"Hey, I got a picture with Maradona last night, the god of soccer," Taurasi said. "That's actually the highlight of my 2008 Beijing."

But the Tennessee Lady Vols leading the way in the finals? Good grief, Diana. Doesn't that make you want to keep the picture with Maradona and decline your gold medal on general principle?

"Nah," Tauarasi said, laughing. "Today, everybody plays for one country. There's no ego. There are no personal successes that get in the way of the gold medal.

"We were on a mission. We had a chip on our shoulder from all this talk that these other people were catching up. We wanted to put a stop to it. I think we sent our message."

In the one game where the Americans faced real trouble, Taurasi hit a succession of threes, finished with 21 points and nine rebounds and left Svetlana Abrosimova floored with an elbow to the face. Donovan raved after that 15-point win over the Russians that the bigger the game, the bigger Taurasi plays. Connecticut would concur.

After the semifinal win, Taurasi's face was cut, she had a sore thumb and a hacking cough. Everybody laughed when she called it "the Jordan flu," a reference to his legendary game in the 1997 Finals. Yet it would turn out on this gold medal night that Taurasi would play only 11 minutes and score seven points because of foul trouble. She made no Jordan references.

"Tonight," Taurasi said, "I was a cheerleader. But that's the greatest thing about this series. We got contributions from everyone."

Sheryl Swoopes and Dawn Staley were gone from this team. A slew of younger guards took their place. Now Parker and Fowles stand poised to accept the inside torch from Leslie and Thompson. The U.S. has won 33 Olympic games in a row dating from 1992. And today it looks as if the run might never end.

"We have a lot of good young players coming into the WNBA," said Thibault, coach of the Connecticut Sun. "We can stock this team for a long time."

"Walking on the court, I told Sylvia and Candace, 'It's up to us now,'" Taurasi said. "That's the legacy of USA basketball. It's our turn."

Rowing Takes Guerette Around World
Hartford Courant
Jeff Jacobs
August 12, 2008

There she is in full color on page 91 of the Olympic preview edition, holding an oar, looking buff next to two women from the U.S. water polo team.

Evidently there's another way for a Connecticut girl to get into Sports Illustrated besides playing basketball at UConn.

" Shea Ralph came to speak at a National Honor Society event at our high school once," said Michelle Guerette, who attended Bristol Central High. "I remember thinking, 'Wow. Here's somebody tall and strong. I wish I could play basketball.'

"So for any girls out there whose family wants them to play for the Huskies and they have two left feet — come row. There are lots of Connecticut rowers. Come join us."

More Olympics Coverage The Bristol girl who grew up to become America's best at single sculls isn't exaggerating. There were lots of Connecticut rowers halfway around the world Monday at Shunyi Olympic Park. In fact, it may have been an Olympic record for state athletes participating at one venue on one day. In all there were five.

There was Ken Jurkowski of New Fairfield advancing to the semifinals of the men's single sculls by finishing third in his heat.

There were the Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron from Greenwich, winning their repechage to advance to the semifinals of the men's pairs.

There was Dan Walsh from Norwalk, rowing with the men's eight, who finished second in their heat.

And there was Guerette, 27, advancing to the semifinals with a victory in her heat.

The U.S. eight will compete in the repechage today and if they finish in the top four they will advance to the final. The rest will row again Wednesday.

Walsh and Guerette, a two-time bronze medalist in single sculls at the World Championships, have the best shot at Olympic medals.

But first back to the SI photo shoot done during the Olympic media summit in Chicago.

"I'd never done a real photo shoot," Guerette said. "Usually people take pictures of you competing out there, with your face looking all weird. This was really professional. It was cool. There were assistants running around. The photographer was worried we were chilly. He asked us if we needed a heat lamp.

"We're like, 'Nah, we're athletes. We're not delicate models.' My dad saw the photo first. He was so excited."

Walsh wrestled at 189 pounds at Brian McMahon High. He won the FCIAC twice and finished third and fourth in the states before surrendering to dislocated shoulders. Guerette played tennis at Bristol Central. The twins and Guerette went to Harvard. Jurkowski went to Cornell. The Connecticut five arrive from different sports, different schools, but here they are, a little nutmeg in China.

"This," Guerette said, "is our time."

Guerette's story has emerged over the years. At Harvard, she saw signs to try out for the rowing team. A roommate had once rowed and encouraged her. Afraid to be embarrassed, she did an ergometer (indoor rowing machine) test on her own. And off she went to the Charles River. She fell in love with rowing. She fell in love with Pop Tarts, eating them before an erg test, because the dining hall wasn't open yet. They became her pastry of good fortune, even decorating boxes for good luck. ... It all ended with a fifth place at Athens with the quadruple sculls.

"I took a job in Cambridge after the 2004 Olympics," said Guerette, who worked at Harvard in its office for sponsor programs. "I wasn't sure if I'd continue rowing. But there was a rec single at the Radcliffe boathouse. I'd go out for a spin. I figured it was a good form of exercise and I'd explore on the Charles."

If Guerette wins a medal at Beijing, what happened next surely deserves mention by Jerry Remy on NESN. It turns out the New England Olympians were invited to a Red Sox game after Athens.

"We had these great seats on the Green Monster, looking down at the game," Guerette said. "Charley Butt [her coach] was whispering in my ear: 'You can do the single.' I'm thinking, 'Maybe.' I figured if I trained in it the whole year, at least it would set up for the quad or eight."

As the identification process went on, however, Guerette cleared the qualification standards. She was offered the national singles spot.

"I went home, thought about it for a week and decided to take it," Guerette said.

So let's get this straight. If you win a medal, we can say looking at Manny Ramirez in left field inspired your great transition?

"Well, at least you can say making the Olympics is the only way I get seats that good," she said.

Guerette worked the past year or two at Home Depot in Watertown, Mass., as part of the Olympic Job Opportunities program. She would bike over the Charles to her job. She would bike back home over the Charles. And then she would row on it.

"My life was right around the river," Guerette said. "My co-workers at Home Depot were great. They were so fired up about rowing. They put a magnet on a fridge with my picture on it. We were seeing if it sold more units or not."

The rowing venue is an hour east of Beijing. It is kind of secluded. The rowers don't stay in the Olympic Village. And with a race the following day, Guerette didn't march in the Opening Ceremonies. Guerette will move to the Village after their races are complete, and Guerette said she will march in the Closing Ceremonies. She will row in some fall races. And then there's law school.

Yes, there's more than one way for a Connecticut girl to make it big. Sometimes you just have to come down from the Great Wall of Fenway and paddle your way to glory.

Zagunis Leads U.S. Sweep in Fencing Event
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 9, 2008
Filed at 8:32 a.m. ET

BEIJING (AP) -- Mariel Zagunis won the first US gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, leading an American sweep Saturday in women's saber fencing.

Zagunis, the 2004 saber champion, took the gold with a 15-8 victory over Sada Jacobson, who took the silver. Becca Ward took the bronze.

When Zagunis won four years ago, she was the first American in a century to win a fencing gold. Now, it's becoming commonplace in this event. The US will also be favored to win the team competition in women's saber.

Before the fencing medals were awarded, the Americans had been shut out of Olympic medals completely, trailing the likes of Cuba, North Korea, Taiwan and Uzbekistan in the overall standings. Now, the US is the only country with three medals.

Bird, Taurasi See Russia As Land Of Opportunity
Jeff Jacobs
August 8, 2008
EIJING —

Sue Bird giggles when I tell her I'm still fuming about the farce known as America's gold medal loss to the Soviet Union in men's basketball at the 1972 Olympics.

"That's your Russia. My dad's, too," Bird said Thursday at the Olympic press conference for the U.S. women's team. "It's the Russia I learned about in school, the Cold War and all. It's also the place I've spent six or seven months out of each year for the last four years.

"You know what Russia is for me? Russia is the land of opportunity."

Good grief. Is it too late to get Joe McCarthy on the blower?

Comrade Suzy Q is absolutely right.

"My Russia," Diana Taurasi said, "is completely different than my parents' Russia.

"That's evolution. There comes a point in life when things just have to mesh."

Bird and Taurasi each earn about a half-million dollars a year playing in Russia. That's five times what they get for playing in the WNBA. For the former UConn stars, yes, Russia is the place where the streets are paved with gold.

In 1972, one year after Title IX was enacted and four years before women's basketball was introduced to the Olympic Games, Bird and Taurasi wouldn't have dreamed of getting paid $5,000 to play basketball in New York, let alone $500,000 in Moscow. And they wouldn't have gotten into Beijing at all. Nobody except a handful of pingpong players was able to pull that off.

Now here we are, a stone's throw from Tiananmen Square, talking about it all, discussing Becky Hammon's decision to play for the Russians in the Olympics, debating the U.S. athletes' decision to have former Sudanese refugee Lopez Lomong carry the American flag into the National Stadium for the Opening Ceremonies. Wondering what is to become of China's Olympics.

The Chinese are Sudan's No. 1 customer for oil. As such, they are in position to use their influence to stop the genocide in Darfur. The Chinese will dispute this, of course, but they have failed in their moral duty.

For me, it's an inspiration that the American athletes found the cojones to put one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan under our national banner. Lomong, who will run the 1,500 meters, was ripped from his parents as a small boy. He lived in a refugee camp in Kenya from 6 to 16. His escape and his decision to become an American citizen is a triumph of the spirit.

"His journey is an inspiration," Taurasi said. "He is the American dream."

Sada Jacobson, the Yale graduate with a chance at a gold medal in both individual and team saber, was selected to represent fencing at the flag-bearer meeting Wednesday in the Olympic Village. She nominated fencer Keeth Smart. Brooklyn born, Smart lost out by one point for both individual and team bronze four years ago in Athens. That heartache would be eclipsed by the death of both his parents. This year, Smart nearly died of a rare blood disorder before fighting back — he had to clear himself of life-saving steroids — to make the Olympic team.

"What [Lomong] has gone through is just incredible," Jacobson said. "The crazy thing is that there were so many amazing life stories."

If the Chinese choose to take the flag in Lomong's hands and plant it in their deep-seated national inferiority complex, it will be much more their problem than America's. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. Unless a number of American athletes turn ugly and start shouting about China, the beauty in this Lomong decision is in the duality and dignity of the message.

Bird, the international, understands this.

"I played internationally for a long time," Bird said. "I've visited. I've seen. One thing I've learned, not just as an American, but as a person, there are so many different cultures. You may not understand it. You may not agree with it. But the one thing I learned is that you have to take a step back at some point and not judge. Respect.

"I played in Russia for four years. When I first got there, there was a lot I didn't get. It was different. That's all it was. I know it's not as simple as that. I know things can be complicated. I also know a lot of people don't think that way and maybe they should. Look at Dawn Staley, who carried the flag for us in Athens. We have a lot of different kinds of American dreams and [Lomong] is one of them. That's the beauty of America."

Bird and Taurasi are here foremost to win the gold medal in basketball. They are here to have fun, too, not to make grand political statements. Bird is dying to see the men's 100-meter dash. Taurasi wants to see soccer. On Thursday, she was joking how she was ready to knock people over to get a chance to meet Roger Federer. The smog?

"I'm from Southern California," Taurasi said. "I feel like I'm in LA right now. It's like I'm home."

At least for these two former Huskies, two internationals who have come to see Russia as a land of opportunity, there is no Olympic fight to pick with China. Sport is not being used in aggression.

"What's not controversial these days?" Taurasi said. "[Lomong] is living the American Dream. I think this is being done within the Olympic spirit. If you ask me, it's kind of cool."

There is a time to argue and a time to mesh.

There is a time to devolve and a time to evolve.

It will be good for China to take a step back on this one and not judge too harshly. Respect Lomong as an athlete, not as a political threat.

If that is done, slowly, surely, the next generation of Americans may speak of China the way Bird and Taurasi speak of Russia. Even if I'm still furious about '72.

Some Reservations For Beijing
Hartford Courant
Jeff Jacobs
August 3, 2008

The hermetically sealed foil package has sat unguarded in my basement for four years. And for four years my daughter and my son, overcome by curiosity, have begged me to rip it open.

Inside the package is something that represents the worst fears of humanity. Inside, the package says, is an "escape respirator."

Who are we kidding? It's a gas mask. Something out of World War I. The Tribune bosses issued it to their reporters to carry around Athens during the XXVIII Olympiad. An ounce of prevention in the post- 9/11 world, it turned out, was worth several pounds of anxiety.

There would be no terrorist attack. And by the time IOC president Jacques Rogge told the Greek people "You won!" during the Closing Ceremonies, it had grown clear the biggest danger in Athens was dodging crazy drivers to cross the street.

So Saturday at noon, four years after Athens and 24 hours before climbing onto a 14-hour Continental flight from Newark to Beijing, I ripped open the foil package and put on the gas mask. All remained quiet on the Western Front.

"You look like a fool," my teenage daughter said.

Maybe that's because it's the Eastern Front that raises anxiety now.

Off went the gas mask. On went the white surgical mask issued by the family doctor.

If some reports are to be believed the only way to breathe in Beijing is through a spaghetti strainer. The ozone layer is not only destroyed in China, so are the P, Q, R and S zones.

Whoa, sorry. That little joke may have cost me entrance into the People's Republic. Word is, censorship is so tight that if you make even one reference to the Falun Gong Show, they'll sentence Chuck Barris to prison for three years.

The hard truth is I'm so riddled with guilt and anxiety about this Olympic trip to China. We had buyouts and layoffs at The Courant the past month that cut our newsroom by 25 percent. One-fourth of the friends, colleagues, journalists I have admired on Broad Street are gone. One-fourth of my soul is gone. In its place is survivor's guilt. The trip of a lifetime suddenly feels like the regret of a lifetime. Yes, we have a newspaper to put out. Yes, we must serve our readers. Yes, we must fight to be special. I keep telling myself all of it. Yet the only thing echoing in my head is, "You better write your ass off, buddy."

The offspring of such anxiety is claustrophobia. In 1986, I was caught in an elevator with 11 people in Madison Square Garden for two hours. Panic attacks have come and gone since, risen the past year after being caught on a tarmac for two hours on a full plane at the Philadelphia airport. A 14-hour flight may as well be infinity, and a prescription bottle of Xanax could be the only thing that stands between a sane man and a madman. (Note to readers: If you see an Ugly American in a surgical mask being carted off by Chinese authorities in the next 24 hours, call CNN to say it has nothing to do with Tibet.)

There has been one blessing in my angst. There has been no time to draw premature conclusions about China. There has been no time to bottle, package and tie a neat bow on the Chinese. This is a good thing. Could there be anything more dangerous than to pigeonhole 20 percent of the Earth's population?

The beauty of the Olympics is that a country's door is thrown open. We can look. We can hear. The beast is that we draw absolutes from 17 days in August.

It will be vital to watch how the Chinese handle air quality.

How they curtail the flow of information, especially on the Internet.

How they crack down on dissidents, because let's be fair, the Chinese haven't exactly been as strong on human rights as they have been at, say, table tennis.

And how much of an old-fashioned Cold War rivalry develops with the Americans over medal superiority. China did not win a gold medal until 1984. It is expected to win 45 this month.

Yet to take 17 days in August as more than a snapshot, to make it into the entire movie of the most mysterious civilization in history, is not only stupid, it's dangerous. This isn't Athens. This isn't Sarajevo. The Chinese not only are a military superpower, they are an economic superpower. They have spent $40 billion on these Games (the Greeks spent $8 billion). This is one of the great coming out parties in recorded history. This is the debutante ball for a new market economy. These Games are everything in China.

Yet while many Westerners seem eager to put these Olympics on a par with 1936 Berlin as an agent for bad, we must be equally open to the idea that this could be a catalyst for real — not cosmetic — change for the good. There was an important and balanced piece in The New York Times the other day in which Orville Schell, one of the leading experts on China, said, "The more we engage China the more we will find ourselves entitled to criticize and influence it. This process is, of course, also a two-way street on which we, too, need to be willing to sometimes listen to China. But if we spurn and rebuke China without seeking to play out those areas where there actually is common interest, the outcome could be very dangerous and China will be inclined to be more resistant to the kind of changes which most enlightened citizens of the world would like to see it embrace."

This seems like extraordinarily sage advice. And why, in my angst, I have found solace in drawing a sideways 8 on my surgical mask and on the bottom of my shoes for this trip. The No. 8 is considered lucky by the Chinese, thus the Games beginning on 8/8/08.

Eight on its side, of course, also is the symbol for infinity. Maybe this is naive. Maybe this is overly hopeful. But if we choose to see these Olympics as the start to a never-ending pursuit of human development — and not the endgame for a propaganda tool — a 14-hour flight for one sports writer and a momentous investment by 1.3 billion people will be worth it.