| 热点关注:中国城市社会企业家初探 | |||
| 2006-09-28 胡刚 张菁 杨国琼 点击: 3119 | |||
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Feb 11, 2009
Article: 中国城市社会企业家初探
Oct 2, 2008
Fang Jiake: Senior's Home
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Sep 4, 2008
2007 Conde Nast Traveler Environmental Award Winner: Wu Lihong
Winner: Wu Lihong
Devastating pollution in one of China's largest lakes prompts a small-town salesman to take action. Dorinda Elliott reports on his perilous path
Wu Lihong and fellow environmental activist Chen Faqing used to joke about going to jail. The two grassroots warriors, farmers born in villages surrounded by rice paddies in Jiangsu Province, knew that they were taking huge risks by challenging the local authorities responsible for polluting the nearby rivers that feed Lake Tai. As a boy, Wu swam in the enormous pristine lake, which was exalted by Tang dynasty poets. Painters and scholars on their way to the teahouses in Hangzhou used to stop on its beaches to rest, inspired by the majesty of the craggy shoreline and the waters lapping against bamboo forests. But in the last two decades, the lake's poetic past has been symbolically washed away in China's new commercial frenzy. Today, the 935-square-mile lake, the lone source of drinking and bathing water for two million people, lies in the middle of the country's most industrialized region—the workshop of the world—and the joke between the two friends has become a harsh reality. In April, Wu Lihong was arrested and charged with extortion, and in August, he was sentenced to three years in prison. A month earlier, while Wu was still awaiting trial, I went to a village near Lake Tai, where Chen showed me plastic bottles of polluted lake water collected by his friend before the arrest. "People like Wu are pushing for real change in this country," Chen said, shaking the bottles filled with brown, yellow, black, and even orange water. "He raised awareness of the environmental problems here, but we are up against rich corrupt bosses and officials."
The next day, at Turtle Head Park, where I boarded a ferry with dozens of Chinese vacationers, the lake water along the beach resembled thick, oily paint. The color was an eerie neon green. "What's that stinky smell? It's disgusting!" uttered one tourist from Sichuan, who had come with her son on summer holiday. A fishy chemical odor was wafting up off the lake. "Blue-green algae," said a local tourist. A tour guide told us that the government is trying to fix the problem, but he was afraid the cure might kill all the fish in Lake Tai.
Jul 21, 2008
Karen I. Tse: Legal Reform in China
| The legal system's quiet revolution |
| By Karen I. Tse International Herald Tribune |
Justice in China I
GENEVA This week's Chinese New Year celebrations honored the Year of the Rooster, an auspicious time signifying achievement and new hopes. But while one of China's achievements, its economic success, is well known, another transformation has received far less attention: a revolution in legal rights that has a groundswell of popular support and is poised over the next few years to completely reshape Chinese society.
The two are in fact related: Economic progress and globalization are major forces that help explain the legal changes that are afoot. Over the past few years, China's desire to play a more prominent global role through international institutions - joining the World Trade Organization, hosting the Olympics in 2008 and the like - has thrown a spotlight on its criminal judicial system. The rule of law in support of contracts and the rights of citizenship and property, among other things, is a cornerstone of economic progress and a stable social system. Importantly, as in the opening of the economy under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, the overarching strategy has been provided from above, but there is flexibility in how to achieve the country's goals on the ground, where there is greater local, hands-on knowledge.
In a little under a decade, China has established more than 2,800 legal aid centers - an unprecedented accomplishment for any country - whose basic mission is to provide fair and competent legal representation to all of China's citizens regardless of ethnicity, gender or economic status. Given opportunities to participate in national information campaigns and roundtables on new laws, Chinese from all levels of society - government, law enforcement, lawyers, and ordinary citizens - have embraced the basic concepts of legal fairness and justice. These developments, in turn, have created a very significant opportunity for ordinary citizens to take China's growing body of law and demand that it is better enforced.
Though many laws already exist on the books - covering the rights of defendants and prisoners, and the safety of lawyers - they are not always upheld, particularly in rural and remote regions. Indeed, there have been complaints that lawyers sometimes become the targets of the very abuse that they are fighting against.
Part of the reason has been a lack of education about new laws, and a sense of professional isolation (and indeed intimidation) among lawyers, who are reluctant to insist on their enforcement. Aware of this, the Chinese Ministry of Justice and other governmental departments, with an outpouring of backing from China's own indigenous legal community, have welcomed the support of international players who will work with them in reaching their goal of establishing a country ruled by law.
My organization, International Bridges to Justice, was invited by the Ministry of Justice in 2001 to assist in the development of legal aid and defender services. Our experiences suggest the range of efforts China is undertaking.
In December, for instance, in our joint project with Peking University, more than 3,000 students, members of the Communist Youth League from 14 of the most prominent law schools nationwide, organized a "Rights of Detainees" campaign to "publicize the spirit of the Constitution and enhance the concept of the rule of law." Another joint project, with National Legal Aid of China, involved the creation and nationwide distribution of 500,000 posters and brochures describing the new legal rights of the accused, including versions in Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian and Uighur.
Local legal aid lawyers in Tibet took it further, partnering with local police and prison officials to visit prisoners and explain their legal rights. In Guangxi, local theater troupes created a Chinese-style opera that they performed on the streets to illustrate new rights of Chinese citizens.
Not all of the national conversations, however, have been easy. In one of a series of roundtable meetings among lawyers, prosecutors and judges, lawyers spoke of intimidation by the judicial system aimed against lawyers themselves. Indeed, at one meeting, a prosecutor broke the ice at a tense moment by exclaiming: "Perhaps we need a lawyer to defend the poor prosecutors here!" Some judges, put on the defensive, replied that they were not trying to hurt lawyers. As the frank dialogue ensued, some people were moved to tears - yet many bridges were built.
China's' legal reforms will not be completed overnight, but the door has been opened for international support for the country in this process. As one lawyer remarked poetically after our international training session in Gansu Province, "It is medicine for the heart, a fresh wind in the desert."
This support is critical, and it is up to us as an international community to have the courage to respond. In this auspicious Year of the Rooster, Chinese citizens are sowing the seeds of hope for many generations to come.
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