Couple Acquired Foreign Residency, Still Fined for Above Quota Birth

Posted on 2011-08-15 by wrchina

Source： WRIC 08-15-2011

In order to have another child without incurring Population Control fines, a couple, Mr. Yi and Ms. Gong of Changzhou acquired residency of a foreign country and give birth to their “illegal” above quota child in Hong Kong. When they returned to Mainland China, the family was still fined a quarter million Renminbi in “social compensation fines”.

In April, 2007, the Yi family had a son. The newborn gave limitless joy to the couple. But after a time the couple wanted another child. Jiangsu Province policies prohibited them from having a second child. The desire for one more persisted, the couple thought of the idea to give birth in Hong Kong. To be safe, in April and November of 2008, the husband and wife bought residency permits of the Niger Republic. Ms. Gong gave birth to a boy on March 25, 2009 in Hong Kong. When they returned to the mainland with their children, the couple still received notice of fines from the Population Control Bureau.

The receipt of the notice didn’t panic the Yi’s. They were prepared and requested a revision to the administrative decision from the district government. The revision process upheld the fine. The couple then sued in court to dismiss the fines. They thought they had already acquired residency permits in a foreign country and the certificate issued by the Changzhou City Overseas Chinese Affairs Office confirming their status as returning overseas Chinese. Plus, the second child was born in Hong Kong and had permanent resident status there. His “social welfare” was the obligation of the Hong Kong government and not contrary to the Chinese Population Control Law.

The court dismissed the Yi family’s claim as returning overseas Chinese. By Chinese law, “Overseas Chinese” must have been permanent residents of a foreign country for a minimum of 18 months in two years. Although the couple had acquired permanent residency of Niger, they still lived in Mainland China, and therefore not conforming to the national government’s definition of overseas Chinese.

In 2007, the National Population Commission ordered that Chinese citizens, who had acquired residency rights in a foreign country without living in that country, would be treated as Mainland residents. The decision was emphasized in 2010. If both husband and wife were Mainland residents, the children born abroad who had been living in China for over 18 months would count towards the Birth Planning quota, which means that if the parents’ residency was registered in a mainland locale, “illegal” births would entail a fine regardless of where the birth happened. The Yi family was still under the control of Jiangsu Province’s Birth Control Policy.

The Yi couple paid 250,000 yuan in “social compensation” fines.

Girl at 8 months pregnant: a valuable life in need of saving

Posted on 2011-08-01 by wrchina

Source: WRIC Tanslator by Sandra Lam 11-3-2011

On October 30, 2011, a volunteer from Anhui and I brought donations to a nunnery in the province. The money was raised by a few non-governmental organizations from the U.S.in the hopes that they could help support girls who were abandoned at nunneries. Our last stop was Gulingquan Nunnery, which only has one nun, a deeply spiritual and loving Buddhist woman, and six abandoned girls. Since 2008, we’ve been steadily giving them financial aid but since 2010 we have been able to give them regular monthly aid. There are five girls at the nunnery since the oldest one moved out, but the nun applied for only four girls’ worth of aid this year, effectively cutting off the second oldest child’s tuition stipend. Why? Is there a reason why she can’t go to school?

A volunteer for WRIC discovered that the second oldest girl in the nunnery, Ying Liu, was raped and 8 months pregnant. She immediately rushed to the temple to comfort and console Ying Ling and even arranged for Ying Liu to be taken care of during this stressful time. With a positive and proactive attitude, the loving volunteer gives Ying Liu a bit of courage to face her future. （photo by WRIC）

Liu Ying is miserable with her newly born baby. WRIC’s Volunteer was Feeding the new baby.（photo by WRIC）

After living with the WRIC volunteer for three months, Liu Ying returns to the nun. She jokes around and laughs with her sisters. （photo by WRIC）

One morning as we were handing out donations in Anqing’s Sancheng Temple, a nun named Xinding told us that something might have happened to Ying Liu. She said that her master had hidden the child somewhere, and begged for us to go to Gulingquan to see what’s wrong. When we went to the nunnery, we had to ask numerous times before the master nun would agree to tell us about Ying Liu’s situation.

The nun said that a month ago, she noticed that Ying Liu’s belly was larger than normal and brought her to the hospital. Ying was indeed pregnant. Unwillingly at first, Ying finally revealed that a man, one of the caretakers of the temple, had raped her. When this forty year old man found out that Ying became pregnant, he disappeared without a trace. This kind of situation is incredibly taboo in Buddhist monastic culture but she couldn’t force Ying to have an abortion–that would be murder. But she also could not allow the child to live in the nunnery. Anxious, disgusted, and furious, the nun Sheng Ying sent 8-month pregnant Liu Ying to an old temple in the mountains to have the baby in secret. She did not want the news to spread. Liu Ying’s life and well-being would be in danger if the Family Planning officials found out.

We emphasized that our top priority is to take the girl to the hospital as soon as possible. It was urgent—we couldn’t let Liu Ying bear the pregnancy alone in the abandoned temple. Hiring a midwife was not a viable alternative—it is actually illegal, not to mention risky, to give birth at home.

Finally we came to an agreement. On November 1, we left from Tongcheng and drove more than an hour on mountainous roads to the abandoned temple Sheng Ying led us to the abandoned temple. We were worried that if the girl went through labor at the temple, her life would surely be over. However, Sheng Ying said that the girl cannot deliver the baby at a hospital in Tongcheng, otherwise Family planning officials could easily find her. She urged us to look for a hospital elsewhere that would be safer.

Liu Ying had neither a Birth Permit nor a marriage certificate, which meant that her pregnancy was illegal and punishable. If she ended up at a hospital surrounded by only strangers, she would be forced to have an abortion. Just recently, a 7-month pregnant woman named Jihong Ma was forced to have an abortion in Shandong because of the same legal situation. Both mother and child died. We couldn’t just stand by as the same tragedy threatened the life of a 19 year old girl. We asked for help and support from friends, family members, even mere acquaintances. Finally, a woman from Anqing responded to our prayers and introduced us to the supervisor of a center for the well-being of women and children, who agreed to help us. We were elated. We immediately drove Liu Ying to the clinic. They did a preliminary check-up of mother and child, who seemed to be healthy. However, Liu Ying was not. Due to intense psychological stress and malnutrition, she was extremely weak. The worst part was that she refused to speak during the entire process. We kept talking to her, consoling her, and asking questions, but she never said anything. The only words she would say is “Thank you.”

As of now, Liu Ying has settled in Sancheng Temple. We found an assistant (?) to look after her and assist her with day-to-day tasks. Should anything happen, the women and children’s clinic is just half an hour away. Before we left, we paid for the emergency medical expenses and the hospital stay. We also gave Liu Ying some money for maternity clothes and nutritional supplements. Touched by everybody’s compassion, her mood became more and more stable. We hope that despite everything that’s happened to this orphaned and abandoned girl, our actions might show her that the world is full of love and kindness. In the face of such pain, stress, and adversity, we pray that both mother and child can live peacefully.

VOA Cannot Retreat from China

Posted on 2011-08-01 by wrchina

Women’s Rights in China President Jing Zhang July 30, 2011

I remember an afternoon forty years ago. My father furiously slapped my uncle. The argument was behind closed doors and hushed. I couldn’t make out the reason. Later my sister told me that uncle listened to “the enemy station”—Voice of America—on the radio. Father said that we could be shot for listening to enemy stations. I had no idea what “voice of America” was, only vaguely remembered the name from then on.

As I grew up I learned to listen to short-wave broadcasts. Democracy, freedom and human rights became my lifelong passion, which entailed the price of nearly six years’ imprisonment. From a privileged daughter of Communist Party members, I became a young “anti-revolutionary” criminal. In prison, when I received a visit by my uncle, he told me that radio dials had become more accurate and noises had become weaker.

In those days, massive numbers of audience members in Mainland China relied on Voice of America for a sneak peek of the outside world through a narrow but open gate. Through VOA, the Chinese public understood that “Imperialist America” was not the monster of official propaganda; that the Chinese should also enjoy human rights; that all men were created equal; that democracy was actually a good thing. Many of those who listened to VOA later became leaders and staunch believers who propelled the Democracy Movement, from Democracy Wall in 1979, Tiananmen in 1989 to today. The credit due to VOA, who accompanied the struggles of more than two generations of Chinese, could not be overestimated.

The world had experienced great changes. The only thing that didn’t change was the Chinese Communist regime’s dictatorship. In recent years, arrest, imprisonment and abuse of dissidents at the hands of the regime had increased. More horrifyingly, the police had adopted mafia methods by beating and abducting dissidents in the open. Since the start of the internet-based Jasmine Revolution in February, large numbers of dissidents and civil rights activists had been arrested or put under house arrest. Many ordinary activists had been arrested along with famous personalities such as the artist Ai Weiwei and the attorney Tang Jinling. More than a dozen dissidents in Guiyang, Guizhou had been harassed by the police many times at home in the last five months. They were taken away on forced “vacations” lasting three days to a month. Even Ms. Wu Yuqin, suffering breast cancer, was not spared. Long-time dissidents in exile abroad, of course, were still blockaded. It could not be more obvious that Hu Jingtao and his regime aimed to “harmonize” any discordant notes other than the command of the Party.

Ms. Nie Lina, five months pregnant, is arrested in Xiangcheng, Henan for protesting the government. She was jailed for 15 days. (PHOTOS BY WRIC)

China, too, climbed on the rising information age of the internet. According to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there were 477 million people on the internet in the country. However, almost all of them were trapped inside the government’s powerful firewall. Very few internet users were capable of “jumping the wall” to access information from abroad. A much bigger group, at least 700 million residents of small towns and villages still lived in a world outside of the web. They could only rely on the family radio or television to enrich their lives.

I earlier in the year interviewed a victim of botched sterilization operations mandated by the government’s Birth Planning Policy, which resulted in her crippling disability. This woman from a rural area insisted that her name could not be publicized on “foreign radio”, otherwise local officials would never stop her persecution. I was puzzled and asked what she meant by “foreign radio”. “Voice of America and that Radio something Asia.” How would the village officials know of reporting on those stations? The victim told me that they would be listening. There were many others who listened in her village. They first knew of the Sichuan earthquake from “foreign radio”. Even village officials were now openly listening to “enemy stations”.

An unemployed woman from a large southern Chinese city told me that she tried to learn to use the internet. But she could not afford computer repairs or the frequent viral infections. So she decided to learn about the outside world through radio, which was simple and inexpensive. Her regular listening schedule included VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio France Internationale and Deutsche Welle. Every day from dusk to about ten at night, the interference was very heavy, but after this period the broadcasts were very clear. She usually would not go to bed before finishing the programs. Whenever static was unusually heavy, she could switch between frequencies to find a more clear station. It should be evident that Voice of America’s broadcast in Chinese still enjoyed a vast and loyal audience in China.

At the same time as the Chinese government was trampling human rights, tightening internet control and blocking Western information and the values of human rights and political freedom, it was actively expanding the propaganda apparatus abroad. In 2009, the government initiated the Great Foreign Propaganda Plan. English language broadcast of CCTV-9 became available fulltime through Time-Warner in New York, Los Angeles, Houston and other major cities. CCTV was also available in 14 languages. The government-controlled Xinhua News Agency opened its New York office with 500 staff. Xinhua Book Store, the oldest propaganda organ of the Communist Party, also expanded into major areas of Chinese settlement. Following its model perfected in Hong Kong, the Chinese government exerted enormous influence over almost all Chinese language media through advertising dollars and direct acquisition. Even the media which originated from Taiwan routinely engaged in self-censorship and collaboration with the mainland Chinese government, in order to keep their connections with the Xinhua and Zhongxing news agencies and advertising income.

Xinhua Bookstore in Flushing, New York. A branch of the old Chinese Communist Party propaganda apparatus. (photo by WRIC)

Many Chinese language academies, Confucian academies and Chinese community organizations became in reality conduits of Chinese government’s infiltration. Through community leaders, they aim to influence elected leaders and other political figures in mainstream society. Official and semi-official Chinese media and communication companies went public in large numbers in American stock markets, including china.com, China Telecom, 163.com, Sohu, SINA, Baidu, China Mobile and China Unicom. ITalkBB, a SINA subsidiary, had occupied the internet phone market of nearly the entire Chinese American community and some other ethnic communities by offering services at 50-90% discount of its competitors. This company naturally could not escape the control of the Chinese government. Phone calls to China from many exiled dissidents and other important community leaders through ITalkBB could be monitored. In fact, many dissidents complained of their conversations with family members had been used as evidence by Chinese national security agents to threaten their families in China. Moreover, some exiled opposition groups unknowingly used webhosting services that were in truth the government controlled china.com. Internet communication that had been compromised this way could pose grave danger to dissidents in China and their families.

In conclusion, the internet offers undeniable advantages over broadcast. However, it cannot replace radio broadcasting. In today’s China, foreign Chinese broadcasting is still a crucial source of outside information for the majority of the population who lack access to the internet altogether. Voice of America not only provides indispensable and truthful news reporting, it also upholds the image of the United States and is a valuable antidote to the Great Foreign Propaganda Plan. Not only would the elimination of VOA’s Chinese language service be contrary to the spirit and values of America’s Founding Fathers, it would inflict irreparable harm on generations of dissidents and advocates of freedom and democracy, and silence the most vulnerable groups in Chinese society—the women and children. We urge congress and the Obama administration to face the reality of the China of today, to maintain VOA’s Mandarin service and leave a legacy that could stand up to history.