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Democracy Dies in Darkness SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 Chinese censors crack down on tweets

Police head to doorsteps in interviews to The Washington Post that to pressure Twitter users authorities are sharply escalating the Twit- to delete messages ter crackdown. It suggests a wave of new and more aggressive tactics by state cen- by Gerry Shih sors and cyber-watchers trying to control the Internet. HONG KONG — The 50-year-old software Twitter is banned in China — as are engineer was tapping away at his computer other non-Chinese sites such as Facebook, in November when state security officials YouTube and Instagram. But they are filed into his office on mainland China. accessed by workarounds such as a virtual They had an unusual — and nonnego- private network, or VPN, which is software tiable — request. that bypasses state-imposed firewalls. Delete these tweets, they said. While Chinese authorities block almost The agents handed over a printout of all foreign social media sites, they rarely 60 posts the engineer had fired off to his have taken direct action against citizens 48,000 followers. The topics included U.S.- who use them, preferring instead to quietly China trade relations and the plight of monitor what the Chinese are saying. underground Christians in his coastal prov- But recently, Internet monitors and ince in southeast China. activists have tallied at least 40 cases of When the engineer did not comply Chinese authorities pressuring users to after 24 hours, he discovered that someone delete tweets through a decidedly low-tech had hacked into his Twitter account and method: showing up at their doorsteps. deleted its entire history of 11,000 tweets. Even for a country accustomed to cen- “If the authorities hack you, what can sorship, a crackdown on Twitter is surpris- you do?” said the engineer, who spoke on ing because the service, like Google and the condition of anonymity for fear of land- Facebook, is used by a relatively small num- ing in deeper trouble with authorities. “I ber of people, at least by Chinese standards. felt completely drained.” An estimated 10 million Chinese use In Beijing and other cities across Twitter, according to some tech-industry China, prominent Twitter users confirmed watchers. (Twitter does not issue statis- SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

‘Twitter has become their biggest target to take down’ tics on China.) That is a minuscule figure to be detained by police. (His name is cen- compared with those on government- sored on the Weibo service.) approved messaging and app sites: 1 bil- Last summer, when the Chinese gov- lion for WeChat and hundreds of millions ernment tried to break up a nationwide on Weibo, according to state figures. labor movement, tech-savvy student sup- But in the past two years, as the space porters informed the world via Twitter. for political speech has all but vanished in An elite class of businesspeople with President Xi Jinping’s China, Twitter has ties to the upper echelons of the Com- played an increased role. It has become munist Party as well as media profession- a cyber-window to the outside world, a als are increasingly sneaking peeks at the release valve for the disaffected, a virtual banned service, according to Ho. teahouse for politically minded Chinese at “They all read it,” he said. “For the home and abroad. government, the threat exceeds that of any- Bankrupt mom-and-pop investors thing else. Twitter has become their biggest fume about the lack of financial regula- target to take down.” tions. Disgruntled farmers pass around That’s precisely what’s happening now. videos of land seizures or police thuggery. He Jiangbing, a financial commenta- Muslims from China’s far west share pic- tor, said police came to his Beijing living tures of loved ones locked away in state- room to warn about his tweets. operated reeducation centers. Days earlier, officials visited the It has started to resemble the free- Guangzhou home of Ye Du, a well-known wheeling Twitterscape in other tightly con- writer and supporter of the late Nobel trolled nations such as Saudi Arabia and Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, to hand Egypt. him a printout of 802 tweets he needed to And to the Chinese Communist Party, delete, Ye said in an interview. that means it is a rising threat. Meanwhile, all 30,000 tweets from the “Twitter is the fastest, simplest, most account of Wu Gan, an activist serving an important gathering place if you care about eight-year prison sentence, were deleted in Chinese politics. It’s extremely hot right November, which suggested a government now,” said Ho Pin, the New York-based pub- hack, said Yaxue Cao, a Washington-based lisher of the Mirredia Group, a leading pur- activist. veyor of sensitive Chinese political news. Cui Haoxin, a Muslim poet, was In late November, the wife of renowned taken to a police station and interrogated photographer Lu Guang took to Twitter to recently — partly because of his tweets seek help for her missing husband, believed calling attention to Islamophobia in China. SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

PHOTOS BY YAN CONG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST He Jiangbing, below, shows his Twitter profile on his phone in China, where the site is banned. Twitter has played an increased role in recent years as the government clamps down on political speech. SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

“They not only violated my personal form but, until recently, rarely intervened. freedom of speech, but they’re effectively That helped cultivate Twitter’s reputation violating a foreign company and a foreign as a safe space for an improbable and col- country’s Internet sovereignty,” Cui said. orful cast of Chinese voices. Interest among Chinese users skyrock- The veteran journalist Gao Yu, for one, eted in early 2017 after the fugitive billion- tweets prodigiously despite living under aire Guo Wengui began using Twitter and house arrest after being charged with YouTube to air sensational — and largely leaking state secrets in 2015. Bao Tong, a unsubstantiated — allegations of corrup- purged 86-year-old Communist Party offi- tion against Chinese leaders. cial and former top aide to Chinese leader The campaign would have been Zhao Ziyang, set up an account last year unthinkable on Chinese social media. But and hurls daily criticism of the Xi admin- it played out dramatically over several istration to 137,000 followers. (Calls by months on Twitter, drawing in a new gen- foreign journalists to Bao’s home are fre- eration of Chinese users. quently cut off, but his access to Twitter For months, Guo and his support- appears to be rarely interrupted.) ers shared corporate records and satellite He, the Beijing-based columnist, said images of California mansions allegedly there are fears that a full-scale crackdown linked to senior Communist Party officials. on Twitter would choke off the last online “We tend to see cycles of tightening venue in China for open intellectual debate. and relaxing, and China is clearly in a Last year, He wrote pointed comments tightening phase currently as the economy on Weibo and WeChat urging the Chinese slows down and domestic and intentional central bank to lower reserve requirements challenges loom large,” said Dali Yang, an for lenders because, in his estimation, the expert on Chinese politics. Chinese economy was struggling. The Ministry of Public Security and “I never touched politics. I’m not a the Cyberspace Administration of China, dissident, and I’m not a celebrity,” he said. the Internet regulator, did not respond to “They still took away my voice.” requests for comment. When police visited him last month The first time Chinese state security to warn him about tweeting, He did not actively sought out Twitter users was in promise to stop. He’s not sure he could. 2011, when Chinese dissidents, inspired by “We go to Twitter because we have no the wave of uprisings in the Arab world, choice,” He said. “For people like us, if you tried to use the platform to mobilize pro- have to hold in your thoughts, it feels like tests, said Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher dying.” at Human Rights Watch. [email protected] After that movement fizzled, Chinese authorities have kept an eye on the plat- Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report. ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 Chinese troops sit on Afghan doorstep

While U.S. looks for exit, ping’s economic ambitions over the past rival tiptoes into region seven years have brought a wave of major it has flooded with cash investment projects, from the resource-rich Caspian Sea to Cambodia’s coastline. by Gerry Shih The modest facility in Tajikistan — which offers a springboard into Afghani- NEAR SHAYMAK, TAJIKISTAN — Two miles stan’s Wakhan Corridor a few miles away above sea level in the inhospitable high- — has not been publicly acknowledged by lands of Central Asia, there’s a new power any government. watching over an old passage into Afghani- But its presence is rich in significance stan: China. and symbolism. For at least three years, Chinese troops At a moment when the United States have quietly monitored this choke point might consider a pact that would pull in Tajikistan just beyond China’s western American troops out of Afghanistan, China frontier, according to interviews, analysis appears to be tiptoeing into a volatile region of satellite images and photographs, and critical to its security and its continental firsthand observations by a Washington ambitions. Post journalist. Already, the retreat of old powers and While veiled in secrecy, the outpost of arrival of the new are on display in Tajiki- about two dozen buildings and lookout tow- stan, a tiny, impoverished country that ers illustrates how the footprint of Chinese served as a gateway into Afghanistan for hard power has been expanding alongside U.S. units in the early phases of the 2001 the country’s swelling economic reach. invasion. Tajikistan — awash in Chinese invest- During a recent trip along the Tajiki- ment — joins the list of Chinese military stan-Afghanistan border, The Post saw one sites that includes Djibouti in the strategic of the military compounds and encountered Horn of Africa and man-made islands in a group of uniformed Chinese troops shop- the South China Sea, in the heart of South- ping in a Tajik town, the nearest market to east Asia. their base. They bore the collar insignia of Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jin- a unit from Xinjiang, the Chinese territory TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

As U.S. looks for exit in Central Asia, China seeks influence

GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST Chinese troops have been stationed in these buildings for the past few years near Tajikistan’s border, close to a strip of territory in Afghanistan that China fears could be a gateway for extremists. where authorities have detained an esti- in a brief conversation while his Chinese mated 1 million Uighurs, a mostly Muslim comrades, guided by a Tajik interpreter, ethnic minority. bought snacks and topped up their mobile The crackdowns against the Uighurs SIM cards in Murghab, a sprawl of low- have been internationally condemned as a rises about 85 miles north of the base. violation of human rights, but the Chinese When asked whether his unit had government says they are part of a cam- intercepted anyone crossing from Afghani- paign to insulate its restive far west from stan, Ma smiled. Islamic extremism seeping in from Central “You should be aware of our govern- Asia. ment’s policies about secrecy,” he said. “But “We’ve been here three, four years,” a I can say: It’s been pretty quiet.” soldier who gave his surname as Ma said TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

Scarce public information weight to a growing number of reports Details about China’s activities at the that China, despite public denials, has facilities, some of which bear the Chinese been conducting security operations inside and Tajik emblems, are not made public. Afghanistan. Also unclear are the arrangements over China’s Foreign Ministry declined to their funding, construction and owner- comment and directed questions to the ship. Satellite imagery shows what appear Defense Ministry, which did not respond to be two clusters of buildings, barracks to requests for comment. and training grounds, about 10 miles apart In a statement, Tajikistan’s Foreign near the mouth of the Wakhan Corridor, a Ministry said there are “no People’s Repub- narrow strip of territory in northeastern lic of China military bases on the territory Afghanistan. of the Republic of Tajikistan,” nor “any The Post separately spoke to members talks whatsoever” to establish one. of a German mountaineering expedition Analysts say the Chinese encountered who said they were interrogated in 2016 by by The Post may be paramilitary units Chinese troops patrolling the Afghan corri- under the command of the central military dor, near the settlement of Baza’i Gonbad. leadership but technically distinct from Photos provided by Steffan Graupner, the the People’s Liberation Army, China’s main expedition leader, showed Chinese mine- war-fighting force. resistant armored vehicles and equipment U.S. officials say they are aware of the embossed with the country’s paramilitary Chinese deployment but do not have a clear logo. Taken together, the findings add understanding of its operations. They say they do not object to the Chinese

KYRGYZ. KashgarKashgar presence because the United T A J States also believes that a porous I K I S CHINA Dushanbe T A ­Afghan-Tajik border could pose a Dushanbe Shache N —KARAKORUM HIGHWAY Kuybyshevskiy security risk. Kulob Qurghonteppa Murghab China’s encroachment into Khorugh Military outpost Feyzabad Afghanistan is “fascinating but i d o r C o r r Kondoz n 100Taloqan MILES h a not surprising — and should be a k W

Baghlan welcomed by Washington,” said

Pol-e Khomri Gilgit Gilgit Ely Ratner, executive vice presi- AFGHANISTAN dent at the Center for a New

Charikar Mahmud-E Eraqi PAKISTAN Asadabad American Security, who was a Saidu Mehtar Lam Kabul a Shahr Kabul Jalalabad TAJIK. CHINA deputy national security adviser Mansehra INDIA Sopore Mardan Baramula Detail Abbottabad Srinagar Baraki Barak Peshawar Parachinar to then-Vice President Joe Biden. Peshawar Gardiz Islamabad Kohat IslamabadRawalpindi Indian “We can and should foist THE WASHINGTON POST Ocean TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

more responsibility for Afghanistan on China’s deployments abroad lack China,” Ratner said. “They don’t want a strength and “flexibility,” Li wrote. “China target on their back, but they’ve been free- should push the construction of its over- riding on U.S. dollars and lives for security.” seas military presence gradually.” Despite harboring concerns about mil- itants in Afghanistan for decades, China A rugged chessboard has been loath to be seen as siding with In 2017, China unveiled a naval base any party in the conflict, much less to put in Djibouti that gave it a foothold in the boots on the ground. Middle East and Africa. It steadily installed Instead, China’s state-owned compa- infrastructure — and later, weaponry — in nies and banks have inked infrastructure the contested South China Sea. A recent deals, mining concessions and loans across Pentagon report predicted a PLA base Central and South Asia, the poor and tur- could appear soon in Pakistan — a pros- bulent belt that makes up its backyard. pect China has denied. Its diplomats, who have robust ties with Beijing’s moves have been similarly Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban, opaque in the rugged mountains span- have talked up China’s role as a regional ning Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and peace broker — never a peacekeeper. China: the same chessboard where czar- But China’s global posture is changing ist Russia and the British Empire vied for under Xi, who has shed the country’s long- influence 150 years ago. standing isolationism and spoken loftily There will be “no Chinese military about restoring its great-power status. personnel of any kind on Afghan soil at any People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strat- time,” Col. Wu Qian, the Defense Ministry’s egists increasingly advocate for pushing spokesman, told reporters in August. beyond the Chinese mainland with deploy- In private, the Chinese tell a slightly ments that follow in the wake of the coun- different story. try’s expanding “haiwailiyi,” or interests In late 2017, the Development abroad, said Andrew Scobell, a Chinese Research Center, an influential think tank security expert at the Rand Corp. under China’s cabinet, invited a handful “China’s peaceful rise has encountered of Russian researchers to its central Bei- a complicated and severe situation,” Maj. jing offices. In what was billed as a private Li Dong wrote in a 2016 journal article as seminar, the Chinese explained why China part of a PLA assessment of China’s over- had a security presence in Tajikistan that seas military strategy. He pinpointed the extended into the Afghans’ Wakhan Corri- Central Asian frontier as one of three top dor, according to Alexander Gabuev of the flash points along with the Korean Penin- Carnegie Moscow Center, a Russian par- sula and the East and South China seas. ticipant. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

The Chinese researchers took pains to Dushanbe, to the remote canyon held by describe the outpost as built for training Chinese soldiers, is to witness a landscape and logistical purposes — not a military altered by an even more irrepressible force occupation. They also sought to gauge Rus- than the troops: Chinese money. sia’s reaction with questions: How would In the west, Chinese-built coal-fired Moscow view China’s move into its tra- plants loom over the skyline, providing ditional sphere of influence? Would it be electricity and heat to the capital’s resi- more palatable if China deployed private dents. In the east, Chinese-funded hospi- mercenaries instead of uniformed men? tals and schools rise from the hardscrabble “They wanted to know what Russia’s countryside. In the south, Chinese-financed red lines were,” said Gabuev, who has held tracks circumvent a crucial Soviet-era rail- similar conversations with scholars work- way that had been shut down by Tajiki- ing under the Chinese intelligence agency. stan’s neighbor, Uzbekistan. Stitching it “They don’t want Russia blindsided.” all together are Chinese-bored tunnels In the 1990s, a Uighur separatist and C­ hinese-laid asphalt that cut hours off group, calling itself the East Turkestan trips along the country’s winding east-west Independence Movement, rose in Afghan- highway. istan under the protection of the Taliban The projects reflect Tajikistan’s strate- and threatened attacks against China. gic position in China’s Belt and Road Ini- Although Western officials and analysts tiative, or BRI, an ambitious infrastructure question the ETIM’s ability to carry out sig- investment plan to pull the Eurasian land nificant attacks, it heralded the beginning mass into its economic embrace. China, of an extremist threat facing China. through a single state bank, held more Since 2014, hundreds, or most likely than half of Tajikistan’s external debt as of thousands, of Uighurs have left China for 2016, up from none in 2006, according to Syria, and Chinese officials, like their West- 2017 Tajik Finance Ministry data. ern counterparts, have warned about the In the soft-power stakes, the United prospect of fighters there decamping for States and Russia both appear to be losing Central Asia as they lose territory. In 2016, relative ground to China, which provides the Chinese Embassy in Kyrgyzstan was scholarships for undergraduate Tajiks and targeted in a suicide bombing that Kyrgyz military academy training for up-and-com- authorities attributed to the al-Nusra Front ing defense officials. in Syria. Susan M. Elliott, former U.S. ambas- sador to Tajikistan, said China’s generous ‘You never saw us here’ aid and funding should be applauded but To make the days-long overland jour- viewed with skepticism. In the past year, a ney across Tajikistan, from the capital, handful of countries that have taken Chi- TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 6

nese investments have reconsidered BRI arova, 21, an ethnic Kyrgyz who studied deals amid allegations of corruption and on a Chinese government scholarship in low feasibility. Shanghai. “If someone’s offering money to build Despite the Chinese government’s roads and help put power lines up, it’s insistence on keeping things secret, its hard to turn that down when you have no troops’ periodic visits to Murghab’s bazaar, alternative,” Elliott said. “This is a strategic a row of shipping containers converted and important part of the world, and we into storefronts, are anything but. need to continue our strong partnerships Safarmo Toshmamadov, a 53-year-old with Tajikistan and other countries in the ethnic Pamir shopkeeper, said they have region.” come to her for maybe three years. Some In many ways, the shifting geopolitical attempt a few words of Russian — although currents play out on the windy streets of they always come accompanied by Tajik Murghab, established as an army outpost interpreters, she said. in the 1890s by Russian Cossacks. “We don’t think about them, and they These days, it is Chinese troops who don’t bother us,” Toshmamadov said, shrug- are dropping by in their unassuming mini- ging. “They buy my water and snacks. It’s vans to pick up provisions. good.” One afternoon outside Toshmama- dov’s store, a Post reporter saw Ma, the Chi- “We don’t think about nese soldier, who was initially surprised to them, and they don’t encounter another Chinese speaker. bother us. They buy He spoke guardedly but affably about my water and snacks. his deployment, which he explained was secret. It’s good.” “You should know our government’s Safarmo Toshmamadov, shop clerk standard policies around revealing infor- mation,” he said. “So don’t tell your friends.” Aiperi Bainazarova, a part-time man- When asked to pose for a photo ager at the only hotel in town, said locals together, Ma recoiled. believed there were scores, maybe hun- “Remember,” he said, walking away. dreds, of Chinese troops who stayed on “You never saw us here.” base. They mostly come to town to buy [email protected] phone credit. Sometimes they buy hun- dreds of kilograms of yak meat at the price Anton Troianovski in Moscow, Yuan Wang of 30 somoni — about $3 — a kilo, she said. in Beijing and Dan Lamothe in Washington “It helps the economy,” said Bainaz- contributed to this report. ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019

In China, the rush to riches sees a region turned to ruins

got my mom.” Deadly chemical blast To the residents of Xiangshui county, underscores depths of about 200 miles north of Shanghai, the unchecked corruption Tianjiayi explosion on March 21 wasn’t so much an accident as an inevitability. by Gerry Shih Over the past two decades, local offi- cials have transformed this once-overlooked XIANGSHUI COUNTY, CHINA — A deadly fac- coastal expanse of wheat and rice farms tory explosion in 2007 didn’t kill Ren into one of China’s major chemical-produc- Guanying. Nor did the chlorine gas leak tion centers, tripling the region’s economic that sparked mass panic in 2010. output in the process. When countless smaller industrial But the reckless search for economic accidents struck this smog-choked belt of salvation condemned the community Jiangsu province over the years, they spared instead. The toll, locals say, has been pol- her, too. luted rivers, toxic soil, four major explo- The 58-year-old factory worker’s luck sions in 12 years and a litany of smaller ran out on March 21. An explosion at Tian- accidents that turned the terrifying into the jiayi Chemical Co. ripped through an indus- routine. trial zone and the surrounding countryside, Three years after a similar blast in killing at least 78 people and injuring more Tianjin killed more than 170 people south- than 600. east of Beijing, the Xiangshui disaster is a Ren’s body was found on a country reminder of the domestic challenges fac- road not far from a 300-foot-wide crater, ing President Xi Jinping, who has vowed said her daughter, Ma Li. to pursue safe, “high-quality” development “We used to always worry whenever but also keep the sagging economy and we heard a blast, until we got numb to it,” employment numbers afloat. Ma said in her shattered home about half a A deafening boom from the Tianjiayi mile from the chemical plants. “This place plant jolted Ma from her nap around 2:30 was like a time bomb. This time, it finally p.m. Broken glass was everywhere. When MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

IMAGINECHINA/ASSOCIATED PRESS An aerial view of the debris of the chemical plant operated by Tianjiayi Chemical Co., after an explosion killed at least 78 people last month. The blast further polluted China’s Xiangshui county.

Ma called her brother, who was work- Explosion ing in a nearby factory. He was alive, but badly cut all over the right side of his head, highlights which faced a window. “Then I called my mom and started panicking,” she said, toxic costs holding back tears, “because no one picked up the phone.” of growth In the aftermath, the Beijing News quoted witnesses who said a spark in a haz- ardous-waste storage unit may have set off she rushed outside, she saw neighbors the explosion in the industrial park, where lying on the ground, injured or dazed. Oth- 65 chemical firms were located, creating ers fled, running down the street through a shock waves felt miles away and a 2.2-mag- cloud of thick dust that looked like a sand- nitude tremor picked up by seismologists. storm. Residents say they had complained A sour stench hung in the air. for years about the unchecked rise — and “It was like the end of the world,” she amply documented negligence — of the recalled. chemical plants just a quarter-mile from MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

their village. county’s gross domestic product rose from Public records show local inspectors $1.5 billion in 2009 to $5.2 billion in 2018, found 13 safety violations at Tianjiayi in according to the local government, which February 2018. The company was fined at says three industrial parks account for least a half-dozen times over the past five more than 90 percent of the economy. years for improper treatment of hazardous Today, nearly 70 industrial firms, two waste. steel mills and a power plant rise from a low Workplace deaths have trended lower plain dotted by smokestacks and cranes. in China over the past decade as central The highway to Shanghai is lined with leaders changed performance metrics for government banners urging outside inves- local officials to place more emphasis on tors to jump on the Xiangshui bandwagon, safety and less weight on meeting eco- which has “merged tracks with Shanghai.” nomic targets. Giant letters along a county road spell out Still, more than 100 workers die every “PhSO3H” — an acid compound produced day on average, said Geoffrey Crothall here — like an art deco lawn sculpture. of the China Labor Bulletin, a nonprofit Development came at a cost. New organization in Hong Kong. And the true companies began habitually dumping and number of fatalities may be much higher, burying toxic byproducts. When farm- he added, because incidents involving few ers sought compensation to relocate from deaths often go unreported. encroaching factories, they were often “Every time this happens, the govern- denied, sometimes violently, they said. ment goes through the same routine,” Cro- “We demanded to be moved, but what thall said. “They carry out an investigation. was the use?” said a farmer surnamed Cai, They say lessons will be learned, the guilty whose 79-year-old father died when the will be punished, measures will be taken. roof of his small brick hut collapsed in the “But nothing changes.” blast. “You speak up, and they beat you like hell. So we don’t even dare to speak up.” A danger to speak up Industrial pollution became so ram- Halfway between glitzy Shanghai pant that several northern Jiangsu com- and Qingdao, an affluent port city with a munities gained notoriety in the 2000s as famous brewery and breezy beach villas, “cancer villages.” In the case of Dongjin, 40 this impoverished stretch of China’s coast miles from the recent blast site, villagers has long felt like an afterthought. sued a local chemical company after 100 Local officials tried to change their residents were diagnosed with cancer. In luck 15 years ago by assiduously courting response, the firm in 2006 offered a “sub- heavy industry, mostly chemical producers. sidy” of $11 to each resident. The payoff has been dramatic: Xiangshui That same year, Kong Lingyi, the MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

long-serving deputy environment protec- results perennially lagged behind those of tion chief in the region, which includes almost every other county in the region, Xiangshui county, told reporters that was which put its leaders under pressure. the price of progress. “It’s not shocking that if you’re an offi- “People would definitely choose food cial who still has to keep your growth num- and clothing over environmental protec- bers up, you might say, ‘I’ll take my chances tion, not because we are stupid, but because with factories’ compliance’ if they’re tri- we have no choice,” Kong was quoted as pling the GDP,” said Raymond Fisman, a saying. Boston University economist who has stud- While local officials, including Kong, ied the confluence of political factors and were trailed by persistent allegations of Chinese workplace safety. cronyism and corruption for a decade, the Zhong Zhichun, a native of Hubei chemical industry flourished. Business province who came to work at Lianhetech executives like Zhang Qinyue, the boss of factory near Tianjiayi, said business own- Tianjiayi Chemical, seemed untouchable. ers were cozy with regulators, and employ- In 2017, Zhang was given a suspended ees in the industrial zone were almost prison sentence of 18 months and slapped always informed days before inspections with a $149,000 fine after being sued for took place. dumping 120 tons of industrial waste. “This is about corrupt officials and But soon he returned to work. money,” Zhong said “Why was that he is still the boss?” Late last month, near the blast scene, said Gao Xiaomei, a resident of Wangshang police roughed up and detained reporters village, the area closest to the blast. “Who as well as Zhang Wenbin, a well-known is supporting him? Who is giving him the environmental researcher. power to gamble with people’s lives and Xi was on a trip to Europe — where blood?” he pitched billions of dollars in Chinese Zhang, who has been detained and investments to Italy and France — when placed under investigation in connection the crisis struck, and he called on the gov- with the latest blast, could not be reached. ernment to “strengthen guidance of public Officials at the local environment protec- opinion.” tion bureau hung up when asked for com- Government censors immediately ment. scrubbed searches for “Xiangshui,­ ” by Even if Zhang did not receive favorable far the most-searched term on the social treatment from local cadres, as residents media platform Weibo, according to the widely suspect, he was certainly seen as a censorship monitor Free­Weibo.com. The crucial force. Despite its seemingly impres- comments that remained overwhelm- sive gains, Xiangshui county’s economic ingly praised the government’s emergency MONDAY, APRIL 1, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

response. satisfied with the sum being offered; oth- Circling the streets in Wangshang ers admitted it was difficult to move away recently, Gao, the local resident, pointed despite the risks. out collapsed ceilings and metal doors in One resident, who gave his surname front of every home that caved inward like as Gu, said almost every family he knew crumpled tinfoil. had already sent their children away to live Her tone stiffened when she spot- with relatives. His children had gone, too, ted groups of local Communist Party offi- but he and some of the neighborhood men cials wearing hard hats walking through were going to stick around. It’s the only the wreckage to offer residents external home he’s known. repairs. “You don’t see children in the street, “They’re forcing us to fix our windows do you?” he said. “If our generation dies, and paint our facades so they can show we die. If we choke on poison gas, so be it. higher-ups how they’ve done reconstruc- But the children, if you can save one, you tion,” Gao said. “But how do we dare to do that.” sleep in our homes with cracks in the walls? On March 27, the Ma family gathered They’re putting makeup on a corpse.” around a table to consider the legacy of the smoldering industrial zone. To ‘get rich is glorious’ Ren, the deceased matriarch, had Frustration threatened to boil over on worked for years as a factory cleaner for March 26, when more than 500 people ral- around 2,000 yuan, or $300, per month. It lied outside a hotel a few miles down the was decent pay, better than laboring on the road from Wangshang, where officials were family’s 1.3-acre farm, said Ma. staying to demand relocation and compen- “It’s not that there hasn’t been eco- sation. nomic benefits, but it’s not worth it,” Ma After one official chided the protest- concluded. “Who dares to live here?” ers for demanding payment and cautioned Outside, the village’s main drag was them against challenging the Communist emptying as migrant workers headed home Party, a wall of paramilitary police closed and residents sought refuge elsewhere. in to seize and disperse the crowd, accord- Across the street, a red government ban- ing to eyewitnesses, including Gao, and ner fluttered stubbornly against a white- video they recorded on their smartphones. washed wall. Hours later, the Xiangshui county It reads: “To shake off poverty and get government appeared to relent, promising rich is glorious.” affected residents the option to relocate, [email protected] according to state media. Many were not ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 In China, voices from the vanished

STUDENTS MAKE ‘IF State security agents seized him that I DISAPPEAR’ VIDEOS day from Beijing’s outskirts, his classmates say. Qiu’s offense? He was the leader of the Officials cracking down Marxist student association at the elite on Marxist labor activism Peking University, a communist of con- science who defied the Communist Party of by Gerry Shih China. Over the past eight months, China’s BEIJING — The video opens with the 21-year- ruling party has gone to extraordinary old sociology student facing the camera. lengths to shut down the small club of stu- His voice quivers as he recounts his inter- dents at the country’s top university. Peking rogation — his humiliation — for days at University’s young Marxists drew the gov- the hands of Beijing police. ernment’s ire after they campaigned for The officials pressured him to quit workers’ rights and openly criticized social labor activism and drop out of Peking Uni- inequality and corruption. versity, he says. They slapped him until That alone was provocative. In recent blood streamed from his nose. They jammed years, China’s leaders have been highly sen- headphones into his ears and played hours sitive to rumblings of labor unrest as the of propaganda at full volume. sputtering economy lays bare the divides On the last day, he alleges, they had between rich and poor — fissures that were him bend over a table naked and spread formed, and mostly overlooked, during his buttocks, joking darkly that they would decades of white-hot growth. teach him how to insert a listening device. But the source of the dissent carried an “This all happened on campus,” Qiu extra sting for the government. Peking Uni- Zhanxuan seethes in the video he recorded versity, after all, educates China’s best and in February after he said the police released brightest, the top 0.1 percent of the coun- him, temporarily, after a four-day ordeal. try’s high school graduates. And its rebel- “If I disappear,” he adds, “it’ll be lious young Marxists were doing some- because of them.” thing particularly embarrassing: They were Qiu disappeared April 29. standing up for disenfranchised workers SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

Student activists caught in middle of activism crackdown

SUE-LIN WONG/REUTERS About 50 university students from Beijing and elsewhere attended a demonstration in August in support of unionizing plant workers at Jasic Technology in Shenzhen, China. against the state. The story of Peking University’s Marx- They were, in other words, emulating ist club — as told by four members who the early Communist Party itself. remain secretly active and who spoke on Today, at least 21 members of Peking the condition of anonymity for their safety, University’s Marxist society — including its their supporters, and a trove of writings slight but steely leader Qiu — have been and videos left by activists anticipating placed under house arrest or have van- arrest — illustrates the anxious political ished altogether. Scores more are regularly atmosphere in China, where idealistic stu- hauled in for interrogation and live under dents who embrace the party’s own ideol- constant surveillance. Months of clashes, ogy can be suppressed just like any other five waves of arrests and an influx of plain- political threat. clothes police have, at moments, turned a It poses wider questions that go to world-leading university into a surreal bat- the heart of modern China: What exactly tleground. does the Communist Party stand for? What SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

rising, inflamed by decades of breakneck growth. In the south, labor disputes are ticking up again after falling for a decade. In the north, Bei- jing officials provoked a national outcry last winter after they forcibly expelled communities of migrant workers from the capi- tal. In China’s heartland, a city last year was occupied by thou- sands of decommissioned, job- less soldiers petitioning for com- pensation. Each challenge to authority was supported, in part, by stu- OBTAINED BY THE WASHINGTON POST dents. Qiu Zhanxuan, the former leader of the Peking University Marxist society, has been missing since April 29. “The government is scared because the domestic contradic- tions are growing,” Michael said. gives it the right to rule? “Once you study Marxism, you know real Since rising to power in 2012, Chinese socialism and China’s so-called socialism leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned his with Chinese characteristics are two differ- Communist Party that it needs to win back ent things. They sell fascism as socialism, the public’s faith by alleviating poverty, like a street vendor passes off dog meat as rooting out corrupt officials and ramping lamb.” up nationalist education and propaganda work. But often, the public just doesn’t buy Singing ‘The Internationale’ it. Sprawling behind large gates made of “The government stopped caring for vermilion-painted wood and curved tiles, workers long ago. It only cares about hold- Peking University’s campus in northwest ing onto power and wealth,” a 20-some- Beijing has been, for a century, home to thing Peking University Marxist who China’s intellectual vanguard and future asked to be identified as Michael said by leaders, its troublemakers and its revolu- encrypted messaging app. (Many young tionaries. Chinese people use Western nicknames.) A young Mao Zedong found Marxist- All over China, social friction has been Leninism when he worked in the cam- SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

pus library. Peking University’s students Marxism,” she said. “That painful suffering marched in the May 4, 1919, protests is the daily existence for 300 million Chi- against Western colonialism, a seminal nese.” moment in Chinese political activism. The In 2013, the group established a “work- same school led the occupation of Tianan- ers home” on campus modeled after the men Square, 30 years ago in 1989, before social club formed in the 1920s by the Com- the government sent in soldiers and tanks, munist Party founding father and Peking killing hundreds, perhaps far more. University alumnus Deng Zhongxia. As China promoted dizzying free-mar- The young Marxists would offer night ket reforms in the 1990s, some Peking Uni- classes on labor law, play chess and dance versity students cut the other direction. with the university’s cafeteria workers and The Marxist association was formed in janitors. On May Day and at year-end, stu- 2000 by students concerned about the eco- dents recalled, as many as 400 university nomic dislocation and inequality already workers would show up and sing “The percolating around them. Internationale” or early communist songs In the years that followed, the stu- such as “The Ballad of the Anyuan Road dents would travel weekly to textile and Miners” that commemorated Mao organiz- electronics factories in Beijing’s outskirts. ing a 1922 strike. They joined assembly lines and slept and Their membership swelled, too, to ate in dormitories to taste life at the foot include humanities majors, medical stu- of society. dents and budding scientists. For many, it was an ideological cru- There was Zhan Zhenzhen, who was cible. raised in a brick hut in Henan province by A Marxist student who asked to be a single mother and didn’t know what stag- identified as Lucy worked at a print fac- gering wealth looked like until he arrived tory moving books and applying labels in in Beijing. There was Yue Xin, the daugh- southeast Beijing. She spent 12-hour shifts ter of a well-off Beijing family who brought doing repetitive motions thousands of the #MeToo movement to national atten- times, until her back was sore and her legs tion in China. numb. And there was Qiu, their leader, who She was lucky she didn’t have to arrived on a rare full scholarship in 2016 provide for a family on the $300- to after he won the gold medal in the national $450-a-month salaries like the workers Chemistry Olympiad. beside her, she said. In a written statement he would later “But it was precisely the experiencing release, Qiu described his political evolu- and understanding of workers’ lives that tion. put you on the path of actually practicing Qiu’s father, laid off by the state dur- SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

ing China’s 1990s reforms, had managed to will release them on the condition that start a new career with his technical skills. they give up activism. But the government But Qiu’s uncles, who lost their jobs, were tried that before, he said. left behind as China veered toward capital- “They would grab them, rough them ism. up a bit, scare them, then release them,” “My father got on the last bus of said the blogger, who spoke on the con- ‘Reform and Opening Up,’ ” Qiu wrote, dition of anonymity over fear of reprisals using one of the slogans from China’s turn from officials. “But then the students would toward a greater free market. Qiu recalled go right back to activism.” how his uncles couldn’t even afford to He chuckled. “It’s like they’re not make $1.50 bets when the family played scared of dying,” he said. mah-jongg. “I felt the sense of inferiority in my Warning shot cousins’ eyes,” he wrote. Last July, the students got word that Pun Ngai, a sociologist at Hong Kong workers at a welding equipment plant University who has known the student near Shenzhen, called Jasic Technology, group for years, said Qiu idolized a charis- were struggling to form an independent matic older member of the society named union and clashing with factory bosses and He Pengchao, who had obtained a PhD in police. environmental science at Peking University About 50 students traveled south to but left his career to start a labor nonprofit help, not just from Peking University but in Shenzhen. also from Renmin and Tsinghua univer- By his second year, Qiu joined the sities in Beijing and schools in southern Marxist club and switched his major from and eastern China. Cramming into a large chemistry to sociology. apartment, they churned out online essays On the WeChat social network, Qiu that got hundreds of supportive responses. started posting on social issues. He turned At night, they rallied Jasic workers in the his avatar into a picture of him clenching streets with megaphones. his fist in a Communist salute in front of Their triumph was short-lived. a bust of Li Dazhao, the party co-founder. On Aug. 24, police in riot gear raided That year, Qiu, a sophomore, became their apartment, leading to a brief scuf- the group’s president. fle before dozens of students and work- A leftist blogger from eastern China ers were detained. Most were released, who knows Qiu said it’s possible the gov- but four went missing, including Yue, the ernment is holding some young Marxists prominent feminist. until after the sensitive anniversary of the In the aftermath, state media sent a Tiananmen crackdown on June 4, and then warning shot to the students. SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 6

In a report, the official Xinhua News racy, loathed how the students called for Agency avoided mentioning the involve- a reprise of the Cultural Revolution and ment of students in the Jasic protests. But wrote essays larded with propaganda Xinhua reported that Jasic workers were language. But he helped introduce them receiving funding from an illegal, foreign to foreign diplomats and human rights source. Such allegations in Chinese state organizations, he explained, because they media can portend prosecutors bringing seemed “righteous.” serious subversion charges. They had the potential to be the most When they returned to campus, the serious threat to the government since the students were individually summoned Tiananmen protests, Hu said. to meet with police. One student, Lucy, “The Communist Party knows there recalled the police offering her a choice: is no greater threat than a movement that confess that they broke the law and quit links students with the lower class,” Hu said activism, and the police would drop the by telephone. “They’re looking at a reflec- matter, maybe even help her secure a spot tion of their early revolutionary selves.” in graduate school. Don’t confess, they Perhaps sensing the potential for said, and she could be forced to drop out unrest, the Communist Party in October and be arrested. appointed Qiu Shuiping, a former head of The conversations, Lucy said, were the Beijing branch of the Ministry of State “totally unvarnished.” Security — the feared foreign and domestic In the weeks after that, the disappear- spy agency — to be Peking University’s new ances started to mount. top official. An officer at the Yanyuan police station But the more authorities clamped near the university, where students said down, the more the students defied them they were usually interrogated, declined to by airing what was happening on Twitter comment about the cases or about Qiu and and the hosting service GitHub, services his allegations of mistreatment. Peking beyond the reach of Chinese censors. University declined to answer faxed ques- They publicized how unidentified tions. thugs beat up their Marxist schoolmate Zhang Shengye on campus in November ‘Looking at a reflection’ before taking him away. They posted pic- As the Marxist students came under tures of Qiu, their leader, being stuffed into attack last year, they sought help from Hu a black car in broad daylight on Dec. 26 Jia, a veteran dissident who sits on the — one of several run-ins he had with state opposite end of the political spectrum. security. An uploaded video from Dec. 28 Hu, who has been jailed in the past showed campus security clearing Marxists for advocating Western-style democ- from a science building, ending with a stu- SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 7

dent sprawled on the ground. to be published in case they were seized. That day, the university issued a decree The remaining Marxists, coordinating in that effectively disbanded the club. secret, recently started releasing the letters To irritate the plainclothes agents at a slow drip. who followed them, some members would They saved Qiu’s video and letter to continue to get together anyway — to do release on May 4, on the anniversary of the calisthenics. Qiu kept leading “work expe- protest that inspired their Communist rev- rience” trips for a few more months. The olutionary heroes a century ago. authorities had enough on April 29, when Qiu’s letter defiantly recounted his they seized Qiu and four other students personal life and his experiences with the from a Beijing factory at 8:17 a.m., the police. “The deeper the persecution, the club reported in an online post. Those five greater the blows, the more hatred one haven’t been seen since. remembers in his heart,” he wrote. “I don’t support students being naive, In the accompanying video, Qiu seems opposing the government,” Qiu Shike, a more vulnerable. He ponders what kind socialist writer and Xi supporter who is of abuse workers who challenge govern- influential within some elite Communist ment authority must suffer in prison, and Party circles, said carefully. “But to handle whether he might join them himself. But them with force seems a bit low. Why not his voice hardens by the end of the three- take the high road? Have an open debate minute ­recording. with them, or talk sense into them about “We’ll fight together, advance and why they’re wrong?” retreat together,” Qiu says, and then raises As the number of missing students a clenched fist. ticked up in recent months, those who [email protected] still had freedom prepared “open letters” ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 China tightens its grip on ethnic Hui

couldn’t believe what was happening,” said State crackdown on Muslims creeps into Ma Ha, a 40-year-old owner of a noodle country’s heartland shop. “We had 40 years of religious free- dom. The winds are changing.” Under its leader, Xi Jinping, China’s by Gerry Shih government has intensified efforts to assim- ilate ethnic minorities and curtail religions, LINXIA, CHINA — Worrying signs first such as Islam, that it considers carriers of emerged two years ago in this Muslim foreign influence. For two years on the Xin- pocket in China’s heartland. Calls to prayer, jiang frontier, China has sent hundreds of once broadcast from local mosques, fell thousands, possibly millions, of Uighurs silent. The Koran, banned from sale, van- to what it calls reeducation centers, where ished from bookstores. they are taught to renounce their religion Members of the Hui minority, who and culture and embrace new state-pre- number 10 million, hoped that the state scribed identities as secular Chinese. crackdown would not arrive here, in the That tide of “Sinicization,” as Chinese fertile valleys and loess hills of Gansu prov- policymakers call it, is surging nation- ince, as it had in Xinjiang, the homeland wide. A recent, unescorted trip through of the other major Muslim ethnic group in Gansu, a corridor that once ushered Silk China, the Uighurs. Road caravans and Islam into imperial Hope faded in April. Government China, revealed an accelerating campaign cranes began appearing ominously over Hui to assimilate another Muslim minority, the mosques. A video surfaced on social media Hui, a Chinese-speaking people with no showing workers taking apart the Gazhuang recent record of separatism or extremism. mosque’s gold dome, then smashing it into The campaign targeting the Hui does the prayer hall. Local Hui saw an unmis- not feature mass internment or perva- takable metaphor: The Communist Party, sive digital surveillance, the most striking which once handled religious life here with aspects of the Xinjiang crackdown. But it is a light touch, now ran roughshod over it. a purge of ideas, symbols, culture, products “Women were crying; others, like me, — anything deemed not Chinese. It perme- SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

JOHANNES EISELE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES Ethnic Hui leave a mosque in March 2018 after Friday prayers in Linxia, in China’s Gansu province. China’s Communist Party has engaged in a “Sinicization” campaign to assimilate ethnic minorities.

become largely irreligious, like most of Xi’s ‘China Dream’ may China, in two or three generations. cost Hui their way of life Pressures are mounting against the Hui, the distant descendants of Persian traders, at a moment when the Communist ates life, in ways existential and mundane. leadership is stoking nationalism among Domes and minarets are lopped off the ethnic majority Han to bolster popu- mosques and replaced with curving Chi- lar support. In officials’ speeches, on tele- nese roofs. News broadcasts are forbidden vision and across billboards, one frequent to show pedestrians wearing traditional refrain is the “China Dream” — Xi’s vision Hui skullcaps or veils. Arabic script is out- of restoring China’s historic power and lawed in public spaces, so practically every wealth, its culture and its pride. restaurant has a sun-beaten facade with “The great rejuvenation of the Chinese dark traces where the word “halal” has people is actually a narrow-minded,­ xeno- been scraped off. phobic kind of nationalism,” said Li Yunfei, Strict new quotas throttle religious an imam from eastern China and one of the education to the degree that some Hui last dissident Hui writers. “Anything that is intellectuals predict their people could defined by them as coming from abroad, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

they strive to eliminate through adminis- ‘We’ve regressed 40 years’ trative means.” For centuries, Gansu was a land of An April 2018 Communist Party direc- transition. In the hills where the Tibetan tive obtained by the ­Germany-based World highlands flatten into prairie, sprawling Uighur Congress advocacy group showed Tibetan monasteries exerted a greater the party’s central leadership instructing gravity than the emperors of faraway Bei- local authorities to reverse what it deemed jing. In the Daxia River valley, Sufi preach- to be growing “Saudi” and “Arab” influ- ers and devout warlords had turned an ences in architecture, clothing, religious old Silk Road hub called Linxia into a Hui practice and language. bastion decades before communists swept Although the contents of the direc- through in 1949. tive were confidential, government offices Today, Beijing wants to make its influ- nationwide have issued general statements ence felt. confirming they were implementing its On a recent morning, a local imam orders. ushered a visitor past a flagpole with a The 22 million followers of Islam are flapping red Chinese banner that officials not the only people touched by China’s insisted on installing earlier this year. assimilation drive. Christian church stee- Along a courtyard wall, propaganda bulle- ples and crosses have been taken down tins reminded worshipers of their foremost across the country. When party bosses loyalty: the communist state before Allah. inspected Tibetan regions in August, they “Islam has been in China 1,300 years. told local officials to implement Xi’s “impor- Other than 10 years of the Cultural Revo- tant words on religious work,” tighten con- lution, it’s always been passed down gen- trol over monasteries and “focus efforts to eration to generation without a break,” Sinicize religion.” said the imam, who, like almost everyone Ambitious social re-engineering will in Gansu, spoke on the condition of ano- be seen as one of Xi’s legacies, said Vanessa nymity for fear of government retribution. Frangville, a professor of Chinese studies “We’ve regressed 40 years to the Cultural at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Bel- Revolution.” gium. Sitting in his classroom, where the By curbing religion, the party “removes number of religious students had plunged potential opponents to power,” Frangville 90 percent in one year as new quotas took said. “To control the whole population effect, the imam spoke about how the through technology and ideology — it’s Koran was banned from sale and local what leaders dream about.” publishers who printed the hadith — col- lections of the prophet Muhammad’s say- ings — were jailed. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

Most destabilizing, the imam said, was open discussion about China’s ethnic policy the sense of foreboding. flourished on campuses, in journals, even Hui officials felt unsure about how on television. Two of the most influential­ to please the central government, so they voices were Hu Angang, a conservative erred on the side of caution, the imam intellectual at T­ singhua University in Bei- said. Everybody else — from wealthy Hui jing, and Hu Lianhe, a midcareer official businessmen to poor farmers — felt “com- who later soared through the Communist pletely paralyzed,” he said. Party ranks. “The Xinjiang policy is already being In 2011, the two Hus, who are not implemented here. At least we’re moving related, teamed up to publish essays cri- in that direction,” the imam said. “We’re tiquing long-standing policies that recog- born and raised Chinese. Our passports are nized China’s 55 ethnic minorities, offered Chinese. Our forefathers are Chinese. How them preferential treatment on matters do you want us to be more Chinese?” such as college admissions, and carved out Down an alley from Linxia’s Binhe regions where peoples such as Uighurs and mosque, one of at least three in the city Tibetans lived with some autonomy. facing what officials euphemistically call The Hus pointed out that religious and “renovation,” a day laborer named Ma ethno-nationalist impulses played a role in Junyi seemed strained as he spoke about the demise of the Soviet Union — a cau- the shifting sands. tionary tale that the Chinese Communist Residents were uneasy about new Party studies obsessively. They called for restrictions that cut the madrassa’s class an “upgrade” of the policies and pointed sizes down to 30 — a quota enforced by to a model that they thought China should random checks, Ma said. Youngsters under consider: the United States. 18, such as his 9-year-old daughter, were “The early melting pot policy . . . was forbidden to set foot inside the mosque a powerful ‘Anglo-Saxonization’ policy, courtyard. mainly assimilating other ethnic groups “We know leaders have their reasons,” into Anglo-Protestant groups,” they wrote Ma said. “But how can we pass on our tra- in a paper that traced waves of U.S. immi- ditions? It feels like we’re going extinct.” gration from southern Europe and later Latin America. “Although the norms of plu- An American model ralism have become very strong in recent In 2008 and 2009, China was rocked years, the fact remains that ethnic differ- by race riots in Tibet and Xinjiang that left ences are tending to disappear.” hundreds of Han, Uighurs and Tibetans The articles sparked controversy in dead. China. But today, they are the most-cited In the following years, a remarkably papers on the subject, said Hu Angang. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

They helped propel Hu Lianhe to become a official said as he shuffled to a coat rack top official; last year, he defended China’s and removed his Hui skullcap in favor of Xinjiang policy before a United Nations a sun hat. “I can swap out my hat. You can panel in Geneva. swap out a dome. The government’s not In an interview and in emails, Hu saying you can’t be Muslim, or forcing you Angang said his ideas were often misun- to be Buddhist or Christian!” derstood in the West. He did not espouse Residents had voiced worries about forced assimilation, he said, but the wis- the direction things were headed, he con- dom of China’s ethnic policies was proved ceded, but quickly dismissed the thought. by data showing the standard of develop- “I tell the people they need to trust me, we ment in Xinjiang and Tibet outstripping are not in danger,” he said. “And the people neighboring countries stricken by poverty trust me.” and chaos. The bottom line was that China had “Ethnic harmony and social stabil- the right to do things its way, he said. ity are the greatest, most important pub- “How can Americans possibly lecture lic good, but invisible and intangible like China about religious freedom?” he said. fresh air.” “How many Muslims has America killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? If you ask the Mus- A quiet demise lim world if they prefer America or China, Weeks after Linxia was stunned by I believe they would say China.” the video of grieving worshipers wailing In a high-rise near Linxia’s modest next to their crushed Gazhuang mosque, downtown, Suleiman, a 30-something pub- a retired village party secretary sat in a lic-sector employee, said local government nearby farmhouse picking at a plate of officials and Communist Party members, stewed chicken. most of whom are Hui, were caught in a Was China cracking down on Islam? particular bind. Nonsense, he said. Party members and civil servants are First, he said, the Linxia government prohibited from making hajj pilgrimages, is paying to rebuild the Gazhuang mosque the obligation of every Muslim, according — with a ­Chinese-style roof. Workers did to Suleiman. Linxia city employees cannot drop the dome, but it was an accident. And be seen praying, and Hui contractors are the video that went viral was uploaded by asked to take off skullcaps when they meet mischievous young Hui who have since officials for city business. been punished with 24-hour detention and Suleiman said the government policies released. The party was not only benefi- seemed almost mild compared with rheto- cent, he said, but also lenient. ric on Chinese social media, where popu- “Why is a dome so important?” the lar Han nationalist accounts often sound SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 6

warnings about sharia law, halal food and drivers from seeing the Jiajianan mosque’s other alleged Islamic conspiracies corrupt- minarets being pruned in the distance. ing Chinese society. On the main commercial avenue, officials Chinese Christians are also under covered up Islamic arches with stone slabs pressure from the state, Suleiman said, but featuring a Chinese motif, chrysanthemum there seemed to be no widespread antipa- flowers. In a government-run museum, thy toward Christians, no explosive poten- curators removed skullcaps and heads- tial. carves from mannequins in an exhibit on “I’m afraid someday there will be mass Hui culture. movement against Muslims,” he said. “I’m In the next room, an exhibit on terrified, because China has been easily local history celebrates how the region’s gripped by mass movements since ancient mosques were rebuilt during the 1980s. It times.” omits a piece of context: Many were razed To journey through Linxia, where earlier, in 1957, by communist zealots dur- eight great mosques, a bazaar and war- ing a mass frenzy whipped up by Chairman lord estates once composed the center of Mao Zedong. Hui life, is to see the Sinicization campaign The Hui in Gansu today do not suf- unfolding with a meticulous logic. fer violence, only a quiet demise, Suleiman Along the highway approaching the said: “They’re slowly boiling us like frogs.” city, a wall of black tarp perfectly blocks [email protected] ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019

Amid a lifestyle revolution driven by China’s growing middle class, millions of food-delivery drivers eke out a dangerous living

A breakneck life in the big city

by Gerry Shih with photos by Yan Cong in beijing

Zhang Pei dragged on a cigarette and spill was nothing unusual for his line of pulled up his pant leg: four fresh scratches, work. some swelling around a sprained ankle. As Zhang, 27, is among an estimated far as occupational injuries go, his recent 3 million “waimai xiaoge” — food-delivery

Two couriers emerge from a food court holding packed lunches this summer in Beijing. In China, some 400 million people use their smartphones to order food delivery — up to several times a day. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

For ‘delivery lads,’ China’s gig economy holds daily perils

YAN CONG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST Zhang Pei, a food-delivery driver, departs a food court in Beijing this summer with four bags of lunch orders in one hand and a cellphone in the other to check the location of his first delivery. He works 14 hours a day, six days a week, running orders for Meituan-Dianping. lads or boys — who buzz through China’s dents. In Nanjing, northeast of Shanghai, streets every day on scooters. They dodge about three delivery boys are injured every pedestrians. They thread through traffic. day on average. One-way signs? They are for others. In the past 18 months, local media And many have scars, scrapes, scabs — around the country chronicled 13 deaths or worse — as evidence of the risks. and published 125 accounts of serious acci- Comprehensive official data is unavail- dents. The news reports offer a tiny — but able, but police in Shanghai say a deliv- tangible — glimpse into the chaos: stories ery boy is seriously injured once every 60 of riders who die in late-night hit-and- hours on average. In Shenzhen, just north runs, of head-on collisions into trucks, of of Hong Kong, the food-delivery boys electrocutions during rainstorms. account for 12 percent of all traffic acci- “My wife begs me to do something dif- WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

ferent, less dangerous,” Zhang said, grin- Perched outside a shopping street ning. “But the money is good.” frequented by Russian traders, Zhang That’s because China is becoming a acknowledged the dangers that come with delivery nation. his job. But it brings a decent living for a seventh-grade dropout from the coun- A lifestyle revolution tryside outside Handan — a bleak central ome 400 million people use smart- China steel town perhaps best known for phones to order piping-hot­ meals to coming in dead last in nationwide air-qual- S their doorstep — up to several times ity rankings. a day. Zhang works 14 hours a day, six days a It’s part of a lifestyle revolution in week, running orders for the giant company China as its growing middle class reshapes Meituan-Dianping. Zhang says he aver- the country, a high-tech network made ages about $1.10 per delivery and $1,000 possible by low-tech, low-cost labor. a month. If he works extra hours, particu- It’s also a system of frenetic work- larly during freezing winter months, Zhang loads during meal hours and through bad can haul in $1,500 a month, more than weather, of unforgiving dispatch algo- what some software coders can make. rithms and unruly traffic, close calls and As soon as Zhang turns on the Meituan sometimes fatal crashes. app around 7 a.m., the automated dispatch And at a time when governments system starts flashing jobs on his screen worldwide are grappling with the regu- based on his position with the chime: lations — and implications — of deliv- “You have unconfirmed deliveries. Please ery apps such as Uber Eats or Deliveroo, respond as soon as possible.” China’s $36 billion food-delivery industry The pressure to accept multiple offers a vision of the gig economy taken orders is high, Zhang said, because riders to a chaotic extreme. Even authorities are who decline jobs are punished by Meitu- taking notice of the grueling and danger- an’s algorithm. The highest-earning rid- ous conditions. ers, called “Happy Runners,” must accept “It’s necessary to fundamentally 99 percent of orders they’re assigned. change the takeout platforms’ logic of [valu- ing] ‘speed only’ for ‘profit only,’ ” the rul- ‘Nothing quite as stressful’ ing Communist Party’s official mouthpiece, s orders peak that day around the People’s Daily, said in a 2017 editorial. 11:20 a.m. — white-collar workers in “Can these platforms have more humane ABeijing typically sit in large groups algorithms and let the delivery boys have for lunch at noon, sharp — Zhang is often more time on the road? Can users be more juggling more than 10 orders at the same empathetic and understanding?” time, ferrying in his scooter’s insulated box WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

a smorgasbord of Shanxi noodles, Star- to punish bad driving. bucks lattes, dumplings and dim sum. One of Zhang’s Meituan co-workers, Zhang coolly plunges along streets who spoke on the condition that he be against the flow of traffic, blows through identified only by his surname, Li, said he intersections, ducks into high-rises and rides against the flow of traffic and blows sprints up stairwells to drop off meals with through red lights on a near-daily basis. minutes, sometimes seconds, of his allot- Police fine him often but do not pose much ted time left to spare. of a deterrent: Most traffic tickets are paid The time crunch is made worse off for about $3. because the software doesn’t calculate road “Who wants to run red lights and closures and traffic controls that crop up break traffic rules if the time pressure isn’t overnight. Yet riders get penalized for late so hard?” Li said. “I do it because other- deliveries, and if a customer files a com- wise the customer would file a complaint, plaint on Meituan’s app, they could be and I’d be banned from delivering.” fined their entire day’s earnings or booted off the platform altogether. Push for safety “Know your terrain, constantly calcu- Meituan spokeswoman said the late in your brain, and move with preci- company requires mandatory road- sion,” Zhang said. A safety training at the time of hire for Since he started working at 15, he’s its 2.7 million delivery workers and regu- sewn jackets, welded steel on construction larly offers refresher courses. The company sites and assembled basketball backboards declined to comment further. on a Guangdong factory line. In the past two years, delivery drivers “But that was all physical energy,” in a handful of cities, including Shanghai, he said. “Delivery exhausts your mental have managed to form unions and cam- energy. There is nothing quite as stressful.” paign for better labor conditions — moves As accidents involving delivery rid- that required a level of tacit support from ers became widespread in recent years, the Chinese government. the two large food-ordering platforms that Labor researchers say authorities dominate the Chinese market — Meituan should be more proactive. and Eleme — have tweaked their dispatch Cheng Xusen, chair of the ­e-business algorithms to be less demanding, riders department at the University of Interna- said. On rainy days, for instance, they can tional Business and Economics in Beijing, be late a few minutes without penalty. said Meituan and Eleme outsource deliv- Chinese police say reckless delivery ery to hundreds of small companies with boys are also to blame and have proposed different levels of training and job protec- measures such as installing tracking chips tions. Most drivers work without contracts, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

leading to problems such as inadequate has been recovering at home in Inner Mon- injury compensation. golia on a diet of porridge and dried dates “It’s the regulator’s job to close that — he’s eager to get straight back to work. loophole,” Cheng said. “At the end of the During most weeks, Zhang calls home day, the government needs to do more to to his wife and two sons three or four ensure workers’ legal rights.” times. After he fell off his scooter in August, But for many workers like Zhang who Zhang took the 4½-hour bus ride back to have held other menial jobs across China, his village, where his young family lives in delivering food in the big city still appeals the two-bedroom apartment he bought for with its good pay and sense of freedom. about $27,000 with his earnings. Zhang can take off every Sunday to As Zhang rested his leg, his wife asked do laundry and relax in the 50-square-foot whether he might finally decide to find a room he shares in far east Beijing with different job. a delivery boy who brought him into the He gave the answer he gives every business four years ago. year, he said: “Maybe next year.” During midafternoon down times, [email protected] he’s glued to his phone chatting with his friend Chen, a co-worker who crashed into Wang Yuan, Lyric Li and Liu Yang contributed to a guardrail and tore a knee ligament while this report. rushing a lunch delivery this summer. Chen ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019

LAM YIK FEI/GETTY IMAGES In China, a city ‘built on our bones’ Incurable silicosis has ravaged the workers who drilled the bedrock for Shenzhen

by Gerry Shih the overpass with him were about 80 other former construction workers mulling the LEIYANG, CHINA — Ill and defeated, Xu Chun- same desperate calculus. lin approached the railing, the limits of a Leap now? Or wait to die when their search for justice. lungs gave out? Before him was a 30-foot plunge into The journey that led them to that Shenzhen’s rush-hour traffic. Behind him bridge began in the early 1990s. The men stood police he had just clashed with. On were young and healthy then, wide-eyed

Since the 1990s, Shenzhen, China, has grown from a scruffy boomtown to a cosmopolitan hub of 12 million. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

migrant laborers from rural Hunan province. Shenzhen was a scruffy bor- der boomtown to the south — not yet today’s cosmopolitan hub of 12 mil- lion — where they flocked for off-the- books jobs as drillers. Many Hunanese worked for years, even decades, boring into the bedrock to build subway lines and the foundations of Shenzhen’s whole cityscape. But they didn’t know the GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST inadequacy of the $1.50 cotton masks Wang Quanlong was one of about 80 sick drillers who threatened to kill themselves in 2018 if Shenzhen authorities they were given, or the irreversible did not pay compensation for pneumoconiosis. harm of inhaling silica dust that caked their faces once their drills bit into granite-streaked crust. its economy. Another story is framed by More than 100 former laborers from struggle: a vast, rural underclass that still Hunan have died in the past decade from toils in hazardous conditions, lacking silicosis, an incurable condition caused by documentation or means to seek redress inhaled dust particles that scar and harden except through confrontation with the gov- the lungs. ernment. About 600 more are suffering or slowly Forty years after China shifted away dying, the leaders of worker groups say. from its socialist system — and the promise Three dirt-poor communities in Hunan of cradle-to-grave care for workers — the that once survived off their earnings — country is settling hard questions accumu- even saw progress — are now mired in debt lated in the rush to modernity. and grief while surviving workers spend Who benefited and who suffered? Who their little savings and energy to clamor for is owed compensation and who should pay compensation. up? Since early 2018, Hunan’s ailing drill- Two stories of China ers, led by Xu and others, have traveled The lives of Hunan’s drillers trace Chi- more than a dozen times to Shenzhen to na’s diverging realities. demand help. In early November 2018, One story is reflected in the gleam- hundreds of them occupied a government ing skylines they built: the backdrop for complex before police dispersed them with a prosperous middle class of 400 million batons and pepper spray — further aggra- people who live in China’s cities and power vating their weak lungs. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST Money made in Shenzhen allowed families in Leiyang, China, to build bigger and bigger homes.

night, said he was ready to die for the cause. Drillers’ But he also felt responsible for these lives trace men, he later explained. He was one of the first Hunanese to bring fellow villagers to China’s Shenzhen in the 1990s, setting off a chain dualities of success and tragedy that would unspool over 25 years. It was during that standoff — accord- Standing on that overpass, Xu said, he ing to the accounts of four protesters, activ- yelled at the men to back away from the ists and news accounts — that workers cor- ledge and the madness. Keep calm, he told nered by police on an overpass threatened them, and fight another day. to commit mass suicide by hurling them- “China is like a cart. It won’t move for- selves onto an eight-lane highway. ward if you don’t push,” he later said. “If Xu, one of the protest leaders that you’re not afraid of dying, you can accom- MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

plish anything in this country.” steady or declined in developed countries as jobs such as coal mining waned and Ghost homes safety standards rose. In China, cases are Steep sandstone ravines carve across growing. Sangzhi county, a part of Hunan province In 2018, about 873,000 Chinese work- with little industry or even agriculture. But ers had pneumoconiosis, a broad class of multistory homes with faux-European bal- lung disease, up from about 559,000 in ustrades line county road 420. They are the 2000, according to China’s National Health rewards of laboring in cities like Shenzhen Commission. Love Save Pneumoconiosis, a — and monuments to the human cost. Beijing nonprofit, estimates the true num- “Everyone builds a big house and then ber of sufferers to be much higher — pos- there’s no one to live in it,” Gu Zhongping, sibly about 6 million. a former driller, said as he drove along, Chinese officials, who are drawing up pointing out homes with a former Shen- new plans to study the crisis, say 23 million zhen worker dying or dead. workers are at risk of getting the disease. Gu Hejian, in the house with red post- That’s far more than the 11.5 million at-risk ers for his son’s wedding, doesn’t expect workers in India, 2 million in the United to live much longer. Zhong Yichuan, who States and 1.7 million in Europe estimated lived behind a corner store, died two years by health authorities and researchers. ago. Wang Zhaogang died in April and was Workers who inhale dust and tiny buried by 10 ill workers counting the days mineral crystals found in rock and sand do themselves. not immediately feel symptoms. But over More than 26 former drillers in Sang- months, sometimes decades, the lodged zhi county have died of lung disease since particles do devastating damage. 2009, according to residents, who say Walking, even talking, becomes diffi- deaths are accelerating, with about 100 cult. Lying flat creates the sensation of suf- others who are seriously ill. In two other focation, so most patients sleep sitting next Hunan counties, Leiyang and Miluo, about to a small oxygen machine. In the latter 500 villagers who worked in Shenzhen stages, they suffer heavy wheezing, steep have been diagnosed, according to work- weight loss, frequent bouts of colds and ers’ representatives. fevers. Pneumonia and tuberculosis can Although official figures are unavail- easily turn fatal. Sooner or later, the lungs able, a Hunan city-level document found simply give out. online supported the villagers’ claims. A Behind a trash-strewn basketball court 2017 health check showed that 290 villag- that serves as a village square in Sangzhi ers, mostly in Sangzhi, had silicosis. county, a country doctor, Li Li, watched Work-related lung diseases have held Cheng Xiangyong, a 49-year-old who was MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

doubled over the couch in her office, cough- Free-market laboratory ing up long, thick goop. Shenzhen had a population of 30,000 “He should have 1½ to three years to in 1980 when China’s Communist leaders live,” Li predicted as she prepared familiar designated it the country’s first free-mar- drips: ambroxol to dissolve mucus, amino- ket laboratory. Within decades, farmland phylline to dilate air passages and an anti- and mangrove swamps would turn into biotic. factories for the world’s iPhones, Asia’s Three of her silicosis patients recently fourth-largest stock exchange, and high- died. Sick workers keep streaming in. The rise towers and digs for the super-rich such one-room clinic she converted out of a as $4,000-a-night St. Regis hotel suites. ramshackle storefront doesn’t have proper Shenzhen’s economic output soared medicines, equipment or, Li admits, know- from $4 million in 1980 to $340 billion in how. 2018. Officials have often marketed the city But for sick workers in the remote as China’s window to the world. hills who need care several times a month, For Xu Chunlin — decades before he it’s better than a two-hour drive to a city thought about jumping from the bridge — hospital or six hours to the provincial capi- Shenzhen was a path out of hardscrabble tal, Changsha, she said. Leiyang county in Hunan. “We have so many people like this,” Li A short and badly underfed 21-year- said. “I tell them not to come. I can’t han- old in 1989, Xu first ventured 500 miles dle them. I can’t handle the risk.” south that year with four brothers to As he clutched a table, Cheng’s hoarse work at Shenzhen construction sites. He wheezes filled the room. He had drilled on returned for Lunar New Year with 5,000 and off in Shenzhen for 13 years until 2017, yuan (about $710 in today’s money), he when his symptoms surfaced. His weight recalled, and immediately spent it all on recently plummeted from 156 pounds to more than 3,300 pounds of rice to pile in a 114. granary so his family could recover to their Cheng worried about dying as quickly healthy body weights. as his friend Gu Erhu, whose lungs failed Within four years, Xu was working as Aug. 14 just hours after they spoke. Cheng a middleman. That meant introducing vil- worried about not having money to buy his lagers to Shenzhen’s subcontractors, who own casket, about leaving his wife, Chun- set aside half the positions at work sites yue, and his 82-year old mother to fend for for the Hunanese. Sometimes the jobs were themselves. worth $45,000, making Xu a relatively rich “We’ll manage,” Chunyue said, smiling man on his cut. across the table. “There is no other way.” “Everybody in the village wanted to know me because I had jobs,” he said, sit- MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 6

GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST Xu Chunlin first traveled to Shenzhen in 1989 and later introduced other Hunan villagers to construction jobs there. He made a relative fortune and has a nice home, but he is terminally ill. ting in a three-story brick house he built goggles or earplugs before going down a in Leiyang county with elaborate copper four-foot-wide pit for four-hour shifts. doors. “Every boss in Shenzhen wanted to Zhong worked so many drilling jobs know me because I had men.” that he learned Shenzhen’s subterranean The Hunanese crews relied on hand- geography. The new subway line in Luohu held jackhammers and controlled explo- bored easily through crumbling rock. In the sives to open the ground, sometimes 150 Nanshan flats, where malls and Shenzhen feet deep. They would then pour concrete University rose, it was granite-streaked into the pits for pillars that bore a build- earth that kicked up thick dust. ing’s load. “When the drill bit touches,” Zhong “Pay attention and be safe,” one Hunan said, “it’s like a cannon goes off in your worker, Zhong Pinxie, recalled bosses say- face.” ing before they threw him onto a site with That’s precisely what would cause almost no training. In those early years, he the opaque globules that dotted his lungs said, he was given a simple conical mask to in X-rays last year — a telltale sign of cover his mouth and nose. He didn’t wear advanced silicosis. But Zhong didn’t know MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 7

that at the time; few did. Education and 35 percent of migrant workers signed them awareness on worker safety was scant, and in 2016 — a number that is falling, accord- symptoms of lung disease wouldn’t surface ing to China’s National Statistics Bureau, for several years. which has stopped releasing data. A 2014 The middleman Xu had shifted into nationwide survey by Love Save Pneumo- administrative work by 2008, when a con- coniosis found that just 7 percent of work- struction engineer handed him a one-page ers with the disease reported ever signing document about pneumoconiosis and said a contract. quietly: “Don’t do this job too long.” The construction industry — a sec- “I thought he must know something,” tor that accounts for a quarter of all work Xu said. “But from beginning to end, none fatalities — is known for relying on subcon- of the companies or government ever did tractors called baogongtou who hire work- any publicity about cause or effect.” ers informally, said Eli Friedman, a China labor expert at Cornell University. Off the books The system, he said, “pushes risk to By 2009, silicosis was becoming dif- the bottom.” ficult to ignore. Media reports started to Work-injury insurance also has lagged. surface about subterranean drillers fall- China launched a national plan only in ing ill. Groups of workers from Leiyang 2004. Today, about 80 million migrant started petitioning Shenzhen authorities, workers, or roughly 27 percent, are cov- who agreed to give payments of as much ered, officials said in May. as $15,000 to those who could prove their Shelly Tse, director of the occupational employment. health studies center at the Chinese Uni- But for the vast majority of drillers, versity of Hong Kong, said the Shenzhen that was impossible. workers were further handicapped by the Since the 1980s, when China’s eco- latent nature of pneumoconiosis. nomic reforms unshackled peasants from “By the time workers feel progressively their land and sent them streaming into worse 10 years later, they can’t identify cities in search of work, nearly 300 mil- which company they worked for when they lion migrant workers have occupied a legal contracted the disease,” Tse said. “Compa- gray area. nies may already be bankrupt.” As it embraced free enterprise, the ruling Communist Party neglected workers ‘Justice doesn’t exist’ from the countryside, members of the very With little hope of compensation for class it ostensibly championed. workers, grief — and anger — boiled over Despite a 2008 law requiring all in rural Hunan last year. employers to offer written contracts, just Xu, the former middleman, watched MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 8

the death toll in his villages tick up to more than 70. Six sick men committed suicide. Local clans like the Caos, who buried three brothers who contracted pneu- moconiosis in Shenzhen, were devastated. So was Xu’s own family. Four of his brothers, who worked in the Shenzhen pits, had died, the youngest at 26. Xu, himself diagnosed with terminal silico- sis, was well off financially, but GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST Wang Quanlong’s home is filled with drugs and oxygen bags to Leiyang county was struggling. relieve symptoms of pneumoconiosis. The disease is incurable and “We had to do something,” often leads to a slow, painful death. he said. “People need to survive.” Similar scenes were playing out in Hunan’s Sangzhi and Miluo coun- toward an overpass, where they threatened ties, as ill workers began mobilizing to take to jump, said three petitioners from Lei- their demands to Shenzhen, where they yang and Sangzhi. It was a final gambit. joined forces. It worked. On Nov. 5, 2018, a large group of Police rushed to block the crowd surg- workers, furious about a lack of progress, ing onto the bridge. By midnight, city offi- occupied the government compound and cials had emerged to appeal for calm along- demanded to see Shenzhen’s mayor. They side cooler heads like Xu. slept overnight on mats and by the night Negotiations began at 11 the next morn- of Nov. 7, more than 300 workers had gath- ing. Weeks later, a deal was announced: ered at the scene. Shenzhen would pay silicosis sufferers After 8 that evening, authorities made between $17,000 and $35,000 and cover their move. Videos from the incident show medical costs moving forward. Yet many riot police with pepper-spray guns flushing still were not satisfied. the protesters out of the government com- In the absence of robust courts, China plex. The retired workers keeled over on often settles labor disputes this way, said the pavement outside, coughing, as para- Mary Gallagher, a political scientist at the medics whisked away the injured. University of Michigan. Rural petitioners Dislodged from the building, scores organize mass, repeated demonstrations; of angry protesters regrouped, then veered officials hope to appease them with one-off MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 9

payouts. “But they never acknowledge the of anonymity. systemic failures,” she said. “Justice doesn’t exist in this society,” Clashes between the Hunan petition- he said. “It has glory and wealth and sky- ers and authorities have continued. Dozens scrapers built on our bones.” of workers hoping to return to Shenzhen In a picturesque valley across Hunan, or Beijing to seek more money have been the former middleman Xu, 51, didn’t speak repeatedly intercepted and, on at least one of compensation. As villagers fell ill one occasion, roughed up by police, petitioners by one over the years, he said, some fami- said. lies begged for help, others cursed him for Stricken villages have become closely finding jobs for drillers in Shenzhen. surveilled. During one trip to Sangzhi “I did it with good in my heart,” he county, a Washington Post reporter was said. “How could we have known?” surrounded by plainclothes security offi- In the past two years, he has spent cials and forced to leave the province. $12,000 feeding and lodging protesters in Authorities harassed villagers who were Shenzhen. He advises families of pneumo- interviewed during another visit. coniosis petitioners across the country on Xie Decai, Sangzhi county’s deputy WeChat. He checks up on Leiyang widows director of propaganda, denied official whose husbands once followed him south wrongdoing and said he held 10 meetings to work. He’s still petitioning. with villagers. All he wanted was a public accounting “Some are still unhappy, but it’s not a of the disease by the government, he said, matter of whether they get compensation, not money. it’s a matter of how much,” Xie said. “As far Xu waved a hand at his big house, at as we are concerned, the matter is settled.” the empty rooms. If he had never found The dispute isn’t settled for a Sangzhi drilling, he said, they might be filled with county protest leader who sat in a farm- his brothers, his nieces and nephews. house plotting his 13th or 14th trip to “It’s conscience.” petition in Shenzhen or Beijing. He got [email protected] $24,000 in compensation for silicosis, but the money wasn’t enough to raise his chil- Yuan Wang and Lyric Li in Beijing contributed to dren, said the protest leader, who feared this report. official reprisal and spoke on the condition ABCDE

Democracy Dies in Darkness MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 Paying the price for China’s mineral wealth

by Gerry Shih as the country has become the world’s fac- tory floor. Combined output was 57 million DACHANG, CHINA — Day and night, over- tons last year, up from 6 million in 1998, filled trucks rumble down Nanjiu Road in according to the China Nonferrous Metals the saw-toothed hills that stretch to the Industry Association. Vietnam border. It’s a procession at the But some of the country’s most iso- heart of one of China’s most hazardous lated, impoverished communities are pay- industries. ing the price. The trucks load up on metal ore in the In Guangxi, a balmy southern region valley below, where 13 miners died in Octo- that has some of China’s most concentrated ber in underground shafts laden with tin, mineral deposits, large tracts of farmland copper and zinc. Then the trucks motor up lay wasted by runoff carrying cadmium the mountain toward belching smelters — and lead. Metal miners toil in shafts dead- the culprit, researchers say, behind arsenic lier than China’s notorious coal pits. levels in Dachang’s dust reach- ing more than 100 times the government limit. Across southern China — far from the affluent coasts and Beijing’s gaze — a vast met- als industry has fed the coun- try’s manufacturing boom and sated global demand for com- ponents used in products from smartphone batteries to electric motors to jet airframes. China’s production of mate- rial such as aluminum, copper, GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST lead and zinc, known as base or Jingxi County villagers stand near a facility run by Xinfa Group, an aluminum producer that has brought $2.4 billion in investments to nonferrous metals, has soared the county but drawn clashes with residents over its pollution. MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 2

As its notorious coal pits operate with a degree of impunity — and leave a toxic trail — as they transform crude get safer, China’s metal mountain ore into the essential nuggets of modern life. There are zinc slabs for coat- miners still face dangers ing steel, copper cathodes for wires and transformers, and grains of nickel matte, a step in making purified nickel used in bat- Villagers roll up their sleeves to show teries and other products. deformities caused by ingesting food con- From his soot-smeared home on Nan- taminated by heavy metals. Residents wait jiu Road, Wei Shujian has watched the daily for shipments of fresh water. trucks multiply since the 1970s. In the past decade, China’s top leaders “They are unstoppable,” the farmer have steadily tightened regulations on the growled, wheezing from an incurable lung metals industry, including introducing the disease caused by dirty air. country’s first soil pollution law last year. Wei nodded toward the hillside, where After an eight-year study that began as a huge elevator reached deep into the a state secret, the Chinese government said source of fortune and grief: the mines. in 2014 that 20 percent of the country’s farmland was contaminated and a third of ‘No other choice’ its surface water unfit for human contact. Meng was sitting deep underground at Top officials said last month that they had the end of a 1,000-yard mineshaft, waiting set aside $4 billion to clean up contami- to start his shift around 7 p.m. on Oct. 28, nated soil — similar to the U.S. Superfund when the damp air was blasted by a shock — yet it’s a fraction of the $1 trillion that wave. some Chinese experts predict is needed. Meng fled in a trolley to the surface, A review of soil and water data, inter- where he listened to the groaning earth: A views with environmental researchers, and branch of the Qingda No. 2 tin mine had a 500-mile journey through Guangxi illus- collapsed. State media later said two min- trated how the sheer financial cost is only ers were confirmed dead and 11 “had no the tip of the challenge facing China. chance of survival” inside the mine, about “Central leaders may have a great 10 miles north of Dachang. vision,” said Song Guojun, a former envi- Twenty years ago, Chinese coal min- ronmental-protection official who studies ers had, statistically speaking, the deadli- policy at Renmin University. “But at the est job on Earth. Today, more metal min- local level, there is no transparency, no ers are dying — 484 in 2017 — than their upward accountability, no money.” coal worker counterparts, according to the As a result, metal producers appear to most up-to-date government data. MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 3

GERRY SHIH/THE WASHINGTON POST Huang Guiqing’s arms and legs are deformed after he spent years eating crops and drinking water laced with cadmium. More than 46 other residents of Huang’s village were poisoned as early as the 1970s from a lead-zinc mine’s wastewater.

That’s partly because China’s coal mine merce Bureau show that a government safety has improved significantly under inspection in August found that Chen’s pressure from Beijing. But less attention mine didn’t obtain approval for an expan- has been paid to the metal industry, where sion and that its construction blueprints about 83 percent of outfits are small and “lacked authenticity.” Chen was fined twice loosely run. in June for “substandard equipment and “The fundamental situation hasn’t facilities” and “illegal production.” changed,” a government cabinet spokes- Yet his mine kept humming around man said. “Production accidents are the clock, employing about 800 locals like extremely likely.” Meng, a 32-year-old father of two young The Qingda No. 2 mine, run by a local children. mining boss, Chen Xiangsheng, is a case Chen’s small operation paid $1,140 a study. month, Meng said. The state giant Gaofeng, Filings with the Industry and Com- which owns a maze of shafts directly under MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 4

RUSSIA MONGOLIA man in Guangxi, had transferred Beijing JAPAPAPANPPAAN 15 percent of company shares to CHINA I Detail Shanghai C H N A Chengdu Detail local officials. INDIA The mines north of town NANDAN 1,000 MILES continue to regularly experience Dachang explosions and collapses, killing JINGXIJINGX GUANGXX I one or two workers, residents Guangzhou DAXIN said. Fatal accidents are not VIETNAM Hannoio always reported. MYANMAR Hong Kong “These tuhuangdi” — local LAOS Gulf of South China Sea Tonkin tyrants — “get away with every- 150 MILES THE WASHINGTON POST thing,” said Pan, a fruit seller who quit mining last year at age 34. Many Dachang residents, Dachang’s streets, is considered more pro- like Pan, declined to give their full names fessional but pays $300 a month. for fear of reprisal. One taxi driver trem- “You can’t raise a family on that,” said bled when he was asked to drive by a three- Meng, who spoke on the condition that his story home owned by the mining baron full name be withheld. “The difference is, Chen. After Chen’s mine collapsed in Octo- private bosses go wherever there is ore. ber, local authorities said, they arrested State companies might leave it if it’s dan- eight executives. gerous.” Meng shrugged off his recent brush After the Oct. 28 collapse, local author- with disaster, which he called “unavoid- ities briefly froze mining in the county. able.” He’s considered working as a security One month later, Dachang’s miners were guard, he said, but would prefer going back heading back to their shifts. The township to a small mine. of 30,000 lives in the shadow of a single “If you want higher pay around here,” industry with a chilling legacy. he said, “there is no other choice.” In 2000, a toxic tailings pond broke and washed away an entire village, killing Lead-poisoned children 28. Outside the mines, the risks don’t end. Dachang’s worst accident came a year Water used to separate the valuable later. Local officials tried to cover up a minerals must be carefully stored and flood that killed 81 miners; the news got treated. The minerals are then purified out after a week. Prosecutors later said at temperatures up to 1,800 degrees at that the mine contributed a third of local smelters — a process that, without proper tax revenue and that its owner, the richest controls, releases harmful levels of heavy- MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 5

metal byproducts including lead, cadmium which poses unique challenges. National and arsenic into the atmosphere. panics have broken out in the past decade Researchers from the Guangxi Insti- after consumers discovered high heavy- tute of Occupational Technology and Nan- metal content in rice grown near smelters. ning University sampled dust on road sur- China has “a phenomenon of min- faces around Dachang. A study published ing-agriculture mixed areas,” said Chen in June said they found heavy-metal con- Nengchang of the Guangdong Institute of centrations far above national safety lim- Eco-Environmental and Soil Sciences. its: arsenic at 111 times, cadmium at 55 Yet talk of rehabilitating spoiled farm- times and lead at 2.45 times. land often collides with reality. Heavy-metal levels inside homes In Daxin County, a four-hour drive were only slightly lower, according to the south of Dachang, Huang Guiqing passed researchers. the field office of a soil cleanup operation Off National Road 210, Wei Chun, a and sighed. farmer, said more than 20 out of 25 chil- “They’re still doing preparatory work,” dren in his village, Tanghan, tested positive he said. as early as a decade ago for excessive lead In a bare living room, Huang struggled levels in their blood. For years, he said, with a paper folder, his fingers distended county officials gave households with poi- like misshapen balloons. Growths the size soned kids 30 eggs and liters of milk every of golf balls bulged out of his forearm and month as compensation. elephantine ankles. His documents told the In another village, Tanghuang, people full story: Huang spent years eating crops pointed to chestnut trees that no longer and drinking water laced with cadmium. bore fruit and loquat trees and squash More than 46 other residents of vines that turned yellow during summer Huang’s village were poisoned as early as rainstorms. Evaporating puddles left red- the 1970s as a lead-zinc mine funneled dish circles on the ground, they said. wastewater for years into a ditch that Between the villages was a swol- locals used to irrigate their fields of cassava len lake covered in a shimmering film. A and sugar cane. The stream turned turbid, sample of the water contained eight times Huang said, “the color of soy sauce.” the lead content deemed safe to drink by Officials came in 2000 and found the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, soil cadmium levels 30 times the national according to an independent lab test com- limit. But the local government didn’t take missioned by The Washington Post. action except to pay each resident 15 kilo- Unlike in the United States or Austra- grams of rice, according to a letter the vil- lia, many polluted areas in China overlap lagers wrote pleading for help. with its southern agricultural heartland, The mine went bankrupt in 2002. MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 6

It wasn’t until 2015 that local officials ments to sleepy Jingxi, the next county responded. over from Daxin. In a directive to various departments “You can see this from space,” Huang and residents, a copy of which Huang pro- Qi said as he strode across a dam holding vided, the local government acknowledged back a small valley filled with goopy red that it had neglected the disaster but said mud. its hands were tied. “The polluted area is It was a reservoir of spent bauxite — vast and the cleanup cost is tremendous,” aluminum ore — left by Xinfa, which has officials wrote, estimating a $33 million been locked in repeated disputes with bill. “The financial resources of Daxin locals going back 10 years. Three times in County are utterly limited.” the past 18 months, waste has seeped out The directive set a deadline for soil of such reservoirs, jamming underground cleanup in late 2017. Then there was a new rivers, flooding village streets and render- date that came and went: late 2018. ing the local reservoir water undrinkable. “Maybe they’ll start in 2020,” said a In June, dozens of locals blockaded villager, Wei Tianlai, 68. a Xinfa facility for three days to demand Local government agencies did not water before police dispersed them. respond to faxed questions and requests Chen Wenxi, a Beijing-based environ- for comment. mentalist, helped sue Xinfa on local vil- It’s the same story for communities lagers’ behalf in August 2018, seeking $2.8 across China, where local authorities are million in damages. A preliminary hearing grappling with a sharply slowing economy in local court in June lasted 15 minutes, he and soaring debt levels. said. Chen has sought Xinfa’s environmen- “There are pressures on national tal records, but the government denied expenditures,” said Chen Youjian,­ chief sci- him on the grounds that they were state entist at BCEG, an environmental remedia- secrets. tion firm in Beijing. “As for the historical “There are biases, certain political fac- debts incurred, we do what we can.” tors, when one side has so much money and the other side is so poor,” Chen said. Red mud, undrinkable water Xinfa, whose chairman sits in Chi- In 1986, Chinese officials informed na’s National People’s Congress, has been leader Deng Xiaoping of Guangxi’s wealth named a “core enterprise” in Jingxi’s five- of aluminum deposits. “It must be done!” year development plan. Deng famously snapped back. Huang Lituo, a Jingxi deputy pro- Two decades later, Xinfa Group, an paganda chief, acknowledged several aluminum conglomerate from northern “unavoidable” industrial accidents involv- China, has brought $2.4 billion in invest- ing Xinfa. The local government would MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2019 KLMNO PAGE 7

hold it accountable for the cleanup, he told Xinfa,” he said. “Now if Xinfa moved away, The Post. we might actually die of thirst.” In recent months, the local govern- Huang Hua looked out a car window ment has fined Xinfa $15,000 for illegal at the Caterpillar excavators chipping away prospecting. Officials have also ordered the in the distance, turning verdant mountain company to truck in potable water to com- faces into rust-colored terraces. munities stranded without it. He wondered what Beijing was like But the influence of Xinfa’s presence and what he could possibly do to get help is undeniable. Last year, Xinfa contributed from the Chinese president himself. more than $100 million in tax revenue, “I wish Xi Jinping would see this,” he more than any other source. said, referring to China’s leader. “If not for Xinfa, we couldn’t carry out Then he quoted a proverb suggest- poverty alleviation, build schools, build ing central authorities can have little sway kindergartens, build medical clinics,” said over local affairs: “But the mountains are Huang Lituo. high, and the emperor is far.” Huang Hua, a villager in his 30s, saw [email protected] bitter irony in depending on the firm for survival. Wang Yuan and Lyric Li in Beijing contributed to “We were fighting a water war with this report.