DOCSLIB.ORG

Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan Bryan Tilt University of Washington Department of Anthropology, Box 353100 Seattle, WA 98195-3100 206-790-2743 1 Wenbao Wenti, Huanbao Wenti: Competing Models of Sustainability in Rural Sichuan This miracle [of rapid economic growth] will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace . We recently shut down 30 projects, including several power plants [because] the companies involved failed—as required by law—to review what effect their new investments would have on the environment . My agency has always gone against the grain. In the process, there have always been conflicts with the powerful lobbyist groups and strong local governments. But the people, the media, and science are behind us. In fact, the pressure is a motivator for me. Nobody is going to push me off my current course. (Pan Yue, PRC Deputy Minister of the Environment1) Noting the poor state of environmental protection in China, recent scholarship sees the implementation of sustainable policy as a constant struggle between environmentalist citizens’ groups, who seek to “green” China, and the state, which seeks to suppress environmental protection in order both to sustain the country’s high rate of economic growth and to prevent the spilling over of environmentalist action into the arena of national politics, which could become a direct affront to state power (Dai and 1 “The Chinese Miracle Will End Soon: Interview with China’s Deputy Minister of the Environment.” Der Spiegel, March 7, 2005. 2 Vermeer 1999; Ho 2001; Lo and Leung 2000; Weller 1999). But recent speeches by high Communist Party officials, including former President Jiang Zemin, point to a shift toward a new discourse of sustainability on the part of the central government in Beijing. This discourse borrows heavily from the international discourse of sustainability that gained momentum after the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development, which popularized the phrase “sustainable development.” When viewed in the light of China’s growing framework of environmental law, and recent actions taken by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) to stop the development of large-scale projects that threaten to have massive environmental impacts2, this discursive shift signals the CCP’s willingness to acknowledge the importance of environmental sustainability in its development goals. During the past twenty-five years, China’s Reform and Opening policies have resulted in dramatic increases in foreign trade and an annual GDP growth rate hovering near double digits. One of the most extraordinary parts of this success story has been the rural industrial sector. By the turn of this century, China boasted some 20 million rural firms employing more than 130 million workers and accounting for one-third of the gross 2 A recent article in People’s Net (Renminwang), a national media outlet, reports that thirty large-scale industrial projects were halted by SEPA for failure to conduct proper environmental impact analyses. The stalled projects, many of them with investment from municipal and provincial governments, are scattered across thirteen provinces and are collectively worth billions of dollars. See “30 Ge Weifa Kaigong Xiangmu Mingdan Gongbu ‘Huanping Fengbao’ Guajin Huanbao Xian” [Names of Thirty Illegally Started Projects Announced, ‘Tempest of Environmental Review’ Tightens the String of Environmental Protection.” Renminwang, January 18, 2005. 3 domestic product (Chinese Statistical Bureau 2001). Although the long-term future of the rural industrial sector remains uncertain due to declining profitability, increased competition and a general movement toward privatization (Li and Rozelle 2003; Oi 1999a; Williams 2001), rural industry remains a vital revenue source for many township and village governments, and the primary engine of economic growth in the countryside. Rapid industrialization in the countryside has come at a heavy cost to the environment, and both Chinese and international scholars acknowledge that, “at the same time that TVEs have developed very rapidly, they have also brought serious pollution problems” (Ren and Li 2002). These include both air and water pollution emissions that threaten the health and well-being of rural residents and the integrity of the agro- ecosystems in which most rural industries are located (Ho 1995: 375; Ren and Li 2002). Rural firms currently emit roughly two-thirds of China’s air and water pollution (China Industrial Development Report 2000; World Bank 1997), and this fact is underpinned by a number of systemic problems. Coal, the most abundant energy source in China, is almost universally the fuel of choice for rural industry. Because most rural firms are small in scale, they tend to lack the capital to invest in environmental mitigation technology. In addition, some fiscal peculiarities endemic to the rural industrial sector—a high degree of interdependence between government and industry, the strict revenue demands placed upon rural industry, and a cadre evaluation system that emphasizes industrial development (Oi 1999b; Whiting 2000)—contribute to the pollution problem by creating financial incentives to ignore the problem or to fail to enforce nationally mandated emissions standards (Ren Hongwei and Li Gong 2002). 4 The rural industrial sector thus represents one of the most salient environmental and health risks currently faced by China’s population. Because of its role as the engine of economic growth in the countryside, it also represents a focal point in the growing controversy surrounding sustainable development. This article discusses how the burgeoning discourse of sustainability at the national level in the PRC relates to the local problem of industrial pollution control in a township in rural Sichuan. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2002-2003, the article describes the environmental regulatory regime at the grassroots level in Futian Township, Panzhihua Municipality, Sichuan Province which ultimately resulted in the closure of local factories for non- compliance with nationally mandated emissions standards. The closure of local factories in Futian has several implications worth considering. First, it forces us to rethink the notion that the Chinese government is not serious about enacting sustainable environmental policies and practices. This article demonstrates that the new discourse of sustainability at the central government level filters down to the lower-level government entities responsible for enforcing compliance with emissions standards, and that officials within the district-level Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) see their enforcement duties as an extension of this national discourse.3 3 Environmental Protection Bureaus (EPBs), as the most peripheral entities in the SEPA bureaucracy, represent the grassroots level of enforcement of environmental policy in China. The World Bank publication, Clear Water, Blue Skies: China’s Environment in the New Century, emphasizes that regulatory enforcement has been the weak link in China’s environmental policy, and that “monitoring and enforcement must take place at the local level” (See also Ho 2000; World Bank 1997). 5 Government statistics show a steady increase in nationwide investment for pollution treatment for industrial firms of all sizes, from RMB 8.2 billion in 1999 to RMB 16.3 billion in 2003 (Chinese Statistical Bureau 2004). Alongside this increase in spending for pollution control is a growing trend toward closing industrial firms that fail to meet emissions standards. This article provides insight into the processes and consequences of such a trend for local communities. Second, the closure of Futian’s factories by the district EPB forces us to move beyond thinking of the Chinese state as a singular entity with clearly definable interests. This event reveals the divergent positions and interests of various state agencies in regards to the question of sustainable development. The dynamic tension between the center and the periphery is a common theme in much of Chinese political history, and the tension has, if anything, evolved and deepened during the reform period (Blecher 1996; O'Brien 1996; Selden 1998; Whiting 2000). I suggest here that, within the realm of environmental politics, even a single-party state such as China contains controversial positions within different levels of government and that these positions have important consequences for determining how sustainable development is defined and implemented. Finally, this article suggests that, while the roots of intra-state conflict over sustainability are economic in nature, stemming from the continuing problem of heavy reliance on industrial revenue at the township and village levels, the conflict is also ideological and value-laden insofar as it hinges on the question: What should be sustained? In particular, the closure of factories in Futian came to hinge on the contested meanings of sustainable development itself, with different levels of government advocating wholly different models of sustainability based variously on preserving 6 ecological integrity, promoting community development and retaining important industrial revenue. Toward a Discourse of Sustainability? Chairman Mao Zedong once famously declared that “if people living in nature want to be free, they will have to use natural sciences to understand nature, to overcome nature and to change nature; only then will they obtain freedom
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Confession, Redemption, and Death: Liu Xiaobo and the Protest Movement of 1989
    Confession, Redemption, and Death: Liu Xiaobo and the Protest Movement of 1989 Geremie Barmé1 There should be room for my extremism; I certainly don’t demand of others that they be like me... I’m pessimistic about mankind in general, but my pessimism does not allow for escape. Even though I might be faced with nothing but a series of tragedies, I will still struggle, still show my opposition. This is why I like Nietzsche and dislike Schopenhauer. Liu Xiaobo, November 19882 I FROM 1988 to early 1989, it was a common sentiment in Beijing that China was in crisis. Economic reform was faltering due to the lack of a coherent program of change or a unified approach to reforms among Chinese leaders and ambitious plans to free prices resulted in widespread panic over inflation; the question of political succession to Deng Xiaoping had taken alarming precedence once more as it became clear that Zhao Ziyang was under attack; nepotism was rife within the Party and corporate economy; egregious corruption and inflation added to dissatisfaction with educational policies and the feeling of hopelessness among intellectuals and university students who had profited little from the reforms; and the general state of cultural malaise and social ills combined to create a sense of impending doom. On top of this, the government seemed unwilling or incapable of attempting to find any new solutions to these problems. It enlisted once more the aid of propaganda, empty slogans, and rhetoric to stave off the mounting crisis. University students in Beijing appeared to be particularly heavy casualties of the general malaise.
    [Show full text]
  • Challenges in Researching the Three Gorges
    Running into Dead Ends: Challenges in Researching the Three Gorges Dam By Gørild Heggelund hen I first began to study the Three Gorges made it one of the most controversial construction Dam in the late 1980s to write my master’s projects to date in China. While it will play a crucial role Wthesis, I did not realize that the dam would in flood control and energy generation, it is ultimately a dominate my life for the next decade—both for master political project with much government prestige at stake. and doctorate degrees. Apart from an interval of three The Three Gorges project easily draws criticism, as it has years working for the UN in Beijing and taking maternity great implications for both people and the environment leave, I devoted years of research examining various in the Three Gorges area. Nevertheless, passing judgment political and social aspects of this controversial dam on whether or not the dam should have been constructed project. was not the objective of my thesis. My aspiration was to Not surprisingly, I was exposed to the complexity of provide information that highlights the developments in the political debates surrounding the project early in the the resettlement process for this project, as well as relating research process, as one of my first encounters with people them to general political and social trends in China. One involved in the discussion about the dam was Dai Qing.1 of the main advantages of doing research on an intriguing She presented me with her book Changjiang Changjiang project such as the Three Gorges is the potential for (Yangtze Yangtze), which was published in 1989 as an increased comprehension of the Chinese society at large, attempt to lobby against the dam.
    [Show full text]
  • Contemporary China: a Book List
    PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Woodrow Wilson School, Politics Department, East Asian Studies Program CONTEMPORARY CHINA: A BOOK LIST by Lubna Malik and Lynn White Winter 2007-2008 Edition This list is available on the web at: http://www.princeton.edu/~lynn/chinabib.pdf which can be viewed and printed with an Adobe Acrobat Reader. Variation of font sizes may cause pagination to differ slightly in the web and paper editions. No list of books can be totally up-to-date. Please surf to find further items. Also consult http://www.princeton.edu/~lynn/chinawebs.doc for clicable URLs. This list of items in English has several purposes: --to help advise students' course essays, junior papers, policy workshops, and senior theses about contemporary China; --to supplement the required reading lists of courses on "Chinese Development" and "Chinese Politics," for which students may find books to review in this list; --to provide graduate students with a list that may suggest books for paper topics and may slightly help their study for exams in Chinese politics; a few of the compiler's favorite books are starred on the list, but not much should be made of this because such books may be old or the subjects may not meet present interests; --to supplement a bibliography of all Asian serials in the Princeton Libraries that was compiled long ago by Frances Chen and Maureen Donovan; many of these are now available on the web,e.g., from “J-Stor”; --to suggest to book selectors in the Princeton libraries items that are suitable for acquisition; to provide a computerized list on which researchers can search for keywords of interests; and to provide a resource that many teachers at various other universities have also used.
    [Show full text]
  • February 1995 Vol.7 No.2 the THREE GORGES DAM in CHINA: Forced Resettlement, Suppression of Dissent and Labor Rights Concern
    February 1995 Vol.7 No.2 THE THREE GORGES DAM IN CHINA: Forced Resettlement, Suppression of Dissent and Labor Rights Concerns I . Summary. .3 II. Muzzling the Critics . .5 III. Case of the "Democratic Youth Party". .9 IV. Population Relocation Program. 11 V. Labor Rights. 17 VI. Conclusions. 19 VII. Recommendations . 21 Appendix I . 24 Appendix II. 30 Appendix III . 37 Appendix IV. 45 I . Summary In April 1992, China's National People's Congress (npc) formally approved the "Resolution on the Construction of the Yangtze River Three Gorges Project," marking the conclusion of decades of controversy within the Chinese leadership in favor of supporters of the world's biggest-ever river dam project. Despite strenuous government attempts to muzzle the debate, almost one-third of the normally compliant npc delegates, in an unprecedented display of legislative dissent, either abstained or cast opposition votes. The following year, a pilot project for the resettlement of an estimated 1.1 to 1.6 million inhabitants of the proposed 600-kilometer-long reservoir area drew to a close and, in early 1994, the full resettlement program began in earnest. By mid-year, excavation and preparation of the dam's foundations were underway at Sandouping, the chosen dam site just downstream of the world-famous Three Gorges scenic area; in December, Premier Li Peng formally declared the project open. The Chinese government has offered overseas manufacturers US$3 billion worth of machinery and equipment contracts and will reportedly seek an additional US$5 billion or so in overseas funding for the project. International tendering has already begun for a preliminary range of dam-related construction contracts.
    [Show full text]
  • Chin1821.Pdf
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt1x0nd955 No online items Finding Aid for the China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives, 1989-1993 Processed by UCLA Library Special Collections staff; machine-readable finding aid created by Caroline Cubé. UCLA Library Special Collections UCLA Library Special Collections staff Room A1713, Charles E. Young Research Library Box 951575 Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575 Email: [email protected] URL: http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/ © 2009 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. 1821 1 Descriptive Summary Title: China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives Date (inclusive): 1989-1993 Collection number: 1821 Creator: Center for Chinese Studies and the Center for Pacific Rim Studies, UCLA Extent: 22 boxes (11 linear ft.)1 oversize box. Abstract: The present finding aid represents the fruits of a multiyear collaborative effort, undertaken at the initiative of then UCLA Chancellor Charles Young, to collect, collate, classify, and annotate available materials relating to the China Democracy Movement and tiananmen crisis of 1989. These materials---including, inter alia, thousands of documents, transcribed radio broadcasts, local newspaper and journal articles, wall posters, electronic communications, and assorted ephemeral sources, some in Chinese and some in English---provide a wealth of information for scholars, present and future, who wish to gain a better understanding of the complex, swirling forces that surrounded the extraordinary "Beijing Spring" of 1989 and its tragic denouement. The scholarly community is indebted to those who have collected and arranged this archive of materials about the China Democracy Movement and Tiananmen Incident Archives.
    [Show full text]
  • Up Front with Wang Yu No.2, 2004 China Rights Forum
    UP FRONT WITH WANG YU NO.2, 2004 CHINA RIGHTS FORUM For this special issue, Wang Yu interviews If the government had paid any attention to the Move- 71 several veterans of the 1989 Democracy ment’s demands, China would not be in such chaos. If the Communist regime continues to put its own interests before Movement. the nation’s, I’m sure a big social movement similar to the June 4th Movement in 1989 will reoccur. Wang Dan became a leading figure in the 1989 Democ- racy Movement in Beijing at the age of 20. After the move- Wang Yu: China is beset with problems: unemployment, ment was crushed on June 4, the authorities placed Wang unhealthy environment, poor medical care and income dispar- at the top of their “Most Wanted” list, resulting in his ity.What do you think is the most serious problem now? arrest and imprisonment for four years. After his release REGULAR FEATURES in 1993 Wang was detained again, and in October 1996 Wang Dan:The most serious problem that has emerged from was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “incitement to economic reform is injustice. Corruption in government has subvert state power.” Exiled to the United States on “med- led to uneven distribution of social benefits. If the government ical parole” in April 1998, Wang is now working toward his cannot work out a solution, more disturbances will take place. doctoral degree at Harvard University. A supervisory body and proper legal system must be set up.To sum it up, we need a constitutional government and a system Wang Yu:The June 4th Movement in 1989 was characterized of checks and balances.
    [Show full text]
  • Reflections on Seventeen Years of Exile
    REFLECTIONS ON 2006 . 3, SEVENTEEN YEARS OF EXILE NO RIGHTS FORUM BY CHEN KUIDE CHINA For some, refusing the compromises of ture end, Dai Qing, Su Wei and I collected signatures for the 85 China’s academic world has resulted in the third petition by Chinese intellectuals in support of Fang Lizhi’s call for amnesty for political prisoners.At the same loss of a homeland. time, Dai Qing’s new book challenging plans for the Three Gorges Dam was distributed alongside the first issue of The June 5, 1989, Shanghai; a cloudy,gray morning.The car taking Thinker. me to the airport skirted one obstacle after another through On April 15, Hu Yaobang suddenly died, and the Beijing the chaotic city.Whenever traffic stopped, I watched people student movement was born. I sent two researchers to Beijing TE FOR CHANGE carrying bicycles past roadblocks on their way to the airport. as observers to keep me informed of events. Meanwhile, I was My car weaved right and left until we finally arrived at the in Shanghai along with several academic colleagues working Shanghai Hongqiao Airport.There I boarded a flight to the day and night to collect signatures in support of the demands United States, where I was to be a visiting scholar. of students in Beijing and Shanghai for a dialogue with the As the plane departed I looked down once more at my authorities. Because of the student movement and a visit to our TING A CLIMA homeland. My ears were still ringing with the protesters’ exu- institute from a U.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Dissident at Large
    Dissident At Large http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=2c272570-fc85-4240-96b6-... Dissident At Large Communist Party princess. Ballistic-missile engineer. Spy. Freedom fighter. Death-row dissident. Award-winning environmentalist. BY THE OTTAWA CITIZEN MAY 7, 2006 Communist Party princess. Ballistic-missile engineer. Spy. Freedom fighter. Death-row dissident. Award-winning environmentalist. Those are just some of the moments in the extraordinary life of Dai Qing, whose roller-coaster career reads like the script of an epic movie. Daughter of a Communist-Party star, Dai Qing was so loyal she once said she would have died for Mao Zedong, the father of Communist China. After serving the party as a weapons expert and later as a spy, she eventually became deeply disillusioned, forsaking a life of privilege and power to fight for reform as a journalist. One of China's most outspoken writers in the 1980s, she landed in prison for her role in the 1989 pro-democracy uprising in Tiananmen Square. Now she is an acclaimed environmentalist, and has won a raft of prestigious international awards for her work. And yet, as she sits demurely in a bustling Toronto cafe during a recent trip to North America, it would be easy to take her for just another middle-aged worker on a lunch break, with her faded orange sweatshirt, sensible shoes and practical soup-bowl haircut. 1 of 10 17/11/2011 4:28 PM Dissident At Large http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=2c272570-fc85-4240-96b6-... Until she opens her mouth, that is. "Once I wrote to Deng Xiaoping, you know," she says, referring to Mao's successor, who effectively ran China from the 1970s through the 1990s.
    [Show full text]
  • The Big March of April 27, 1989 May 8, 2009 in Uncategorized by the China Beat | No Comments
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln The hinC a Beat Blog Archive 2008-2012 China Beat Archive 5-8-2009 The iB g March of April 27, 1989 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/chinabeatarchive Part of the Asian History Commons, Asian Studies Commons, Chinese Studies Commons, and the International Relations Commons "The iB g March of April 27, 1989" (2009). The China Beat Blog Archive 2008-2012. 547. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/chinabeatarchive/547 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the China Beat Archive at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in The hinC a Beat Blog Archive 2008-2012 by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The Big March of April 27, 1989 May 8, 2009 in Uncategorized by The China Beat | No comments Wang Chaohua is an independent scholar who received her doctorate from UCLA last year, has written political commentaries for periodicals such as the New Left Review, and is the editor of One China, Many Paths. A leader of the Tiananmen protests of 1989, she wrote the following essay reflecting on the events of twenty years ago for Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, which will run the original Chinese language version soon. Dr. Wang has been good enough to provide us with an English language translation to publish here. We all know that the large scale, student-led pro-democracy movement that took place in China twenty years ago was triggered by the April 15, 1989, death of Hu Yaobang, the former General- secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
    [Show full text]
  • Environmental Ngos in China: Encouraging Action And
    Environmental NGOs in China: Encouraging Action and Addressing Public Grievances Monday, February 7, 2005 at 2:00 PM Rayburn House Office Building Room 2255 Statement of Patricia Adams Thank you very much for the opportunity to participate in this Congressional-Executive Commission on China Roundtable. I am the Executive Director of Probe International, a Canadian-based environmental NGO. For 25 years, we have worked with citizens in Third World countries to help them fight development projects that undermine the environments they depend on. Since the early 1980s, Probe International has monitored the world’s largest and most controversial dam project, the Three Gorges dam on China’s Yangtze river. We have done so by working with academics, researchers, and press in China, including Dai Qing, the celebrated Chinese journalist who spent 10 months in jail for publishing Yangtze! Yangtze!, a book authored by China’s most eminent scientists and scholars. Probe International translated and published Yangtze! Yangtze! and a subsequent book edited by Dai Qing, called The River Dragon Has Come!. Both books are banned in China. We also published our own damning critique of the dam’s official feasibility study, which was financed by the Canadian government, conducted by Canadian engineers, and used to justify building the Three Gorges dam. I am also the publisher of Three Gorges Probe, an Internet news service that Probe International began in 1998 to report on Three Gorges and other dams in China. Our goal has been to circumvent the ban on criticism of the Three Gorges dam. We believe that projects like Three Gorges can be built only in the absence of good information about their real costs and benefits, and in the absence of an informed public debate.
    [Show full text]
  • Immortality Gloria DAVIES
    AFTERLIVES OF CHINESE COMMUNISM 89 15 不朽 Immortality Gloria DAVIES When I graduated from university in 1966, I sincerely believed what I was taught, that I was a brand-new bolt to be used in the construction of the great mansion of communism. I was willing to be put wherever my country needed me, and I was prepared to stay in place my whole life. To me, Mao was like God. I believed that he was not only the great leader of the Chinese people, but also the great leader of people throughout the world. I feared the day when he would no longer be with us. I really hoped there’d be a scientific breakthrough that’d enable young people like us to give up voluntarily a year of our own lives, to add a minute to his. That way the world would be saved. Dai Qing, 19951 have sometimes used these remarks in a course I teach on modern Chinese history to illustrate the extent to which young people were in thrall to Mao Zedong Iduring the Cultural Revolution. They also appear as the first of three epigraphs in Frederick Teiwes’s essay, ‘Mao and His Followers,’ which I regularly set as required course reading. Echoing Teiwes, I tell my students that the epigraphs exemplify Mao’s stature in a totalitarian Party-state system, in which ‘virtually all members of the body politic became the Chairman’s followers, willingly or not, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.’2 Reading Dai Qing’s remarks this way translates her enthusiasm for Mao’s revolutionary vision into a delusion.
    [Show full text]
  • 'To Live Is Not to Breathe; It Is to Act'
    'To Live is Not to Breathe; It is to Act' Dai Qing and her Notion of A Chinese Intellectual BY CHENG LI SHANGHAI, China July 1995 Few writers, in China or elsewhere, in this or any other age, have had a more dramatic, or bizarre, political experience than Dai Qing (pronounced dai ching). A Child of an anti-Japanese martyr, an adopted daughter of a Communist marshal, a Red Guard in the Cul- tural Revolution, an engineering student specializing in interconti- nental ballistic missiles, an intelligence agent for the people's Libera- tion Army (PLA), a prominent investigative journalist, an activist in the 1989 Tiananmen protest movement, a political prisoner in China's maximum security jail, a spokesperson for environmental protection and other social movements in the country, Dai Qing un- doubtedly has had an extraordinary career. Even more extraordinary, however, is Dai's courageous character, her strong sense of social responsibility, and her thought-provoking ideas about China's future. After the Tiananmen massacre, many dis- sident intellectuals and student leaders escaped to foreign countries. The cultural attach6 at the German Embassy in Beijing offered Dai the opportunity to go to Germany, presumedly to take part in a cul- tural exchange program. But Dai told the German diplomat that as a public intellectual in China, she was concerned about something more important than her own safety. When Dai was released after ten months of imprisonment without trial and was allowed to travel to the United States, two American lawyers asked Dai whether she would like to request political asy- lum or pursue permanent residence in the US.
    [Show full text]