It’s a public slap in the face that China’s President Xi Jinping has handed out. Xi has called the country’s senior officials to order. He said Beijing needs to “get a grip on tone” in its communications with the world and should be “open and confident, but also modest and humble.” That Xi made this announcement via the Xinhua news agency is evidence of exasperation with the behavior and statements of his diplomats, who are increasingly engaged in ugly exchanges with foreign representatives. Xi wants to create a “trustworthy, lovable and respectable” image for China. This move does not come by chance, as the People’s Republic faces difficult events: the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, and the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on July 1.
The timing of the arrest of human rights activist Wang Aizhong was no coincidence. Marcel Grzanna spoke with people who, whether they are 65 or 24, keep the memory of the victims of June 4, 1989, alive, even though the date is increasingly threatening to disappear from the history books. Beijing’s National Security Law means it’s only a matter of time.
“As a result of global warming, Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade,” says the “White Paper on China’s Arctic Policy” from Beijing’s perspective. Michael Radunski reveals which economic interests have led the People’s Republic to see itself as a “Near-Arctic state” and what role the dream of the “Polar Silk Road” plays in this.
For a brief moment, Sergey Lavrov drops the diplomatic mask. “It has long been perfectly clear to everyone that this is our territory, this is our country,” Russia’s Foreign Minister said last week, referring to the Arctic. “This is our land.” So when Russia took over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council a few days later, it should have been clear not only to the eight council members (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Russia and the United States) that Moscow lays claim to the entire 1.2 million square kilometers of that icy region.
And so Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide expressed deep concern as early as December: “We are observing a self-confident Russia in the region.” But new players are also suddenly pushing their way into the “strategically most important region,” she said. Søreide means China in particular.
In January 2018, Beijing published its own Arctic strategy for the first time. A white paper states the goal is to “understand, protect, develop and participate in the governance of the Arctic, to safeguard the common interests of all states and the international community.” But behind the diplomatic platitudes lie Beijing’s own interests: exploiting resources and raw materials, using short sea routes, and, above all, having a say in the region’s future. “China has been involved in the Arctic for a long time, but it is only with this white paper that Beijing has clearly set out how comprehensive China’s interest really is,” says Marc Lanteigne of the Arctic University in Tromsø, Norway, in an interview with China.Table.
In fact, the North Pole belongs to no one. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that the five states with land within the Arctic Circle – Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway – may only claim an economic zone 320 kilometers wide beginning at their respective mainland. Russia, however, sees the entire polar region as a continuation of its terrestrial territory underwater. For a long time, this discussion interested mainly academic circles, geologists and cartographers because the Arctic was covered by meter-thick ice, and even on land, the extreme conditions made life almost impossible.
But now the ice is melting. The Northeast Passage is navigable in summer; the Northwest Passage could soon follow. Both would shorten the sea routes between Asia, America, and Europe to a large extent. In addition, climate change is making previously inaccessible raw materials, rare earths and precious metals suddenly accessible. According to estimates, around 13 percent of the world’s oil and 30 percent of its gas reserves lie dormant in the Arctic. Diamonds, copper, platinum, and zinc are also suspected to be found there, as well as rare earths, which are essential for smartphone production and car batteries. Sand and gravel, urgently needed by the construction industry, could also be fetched.
All this has also been registered in Beijing. Here, the opening sea routes through the Arctic are seen as an integral part of the “New Silk Roads.” President Xi Jinping’s prestigious project – consisting of the terrestrial and maritime Silk Road – is to be completed with a Polar Silk Road. “As a result of global warming, the Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade,” China’s Arctic White Paper says.
Compared to the routes via the Suez and Panama Canal, the Northeast Passage would reduce the transport time from Asia to Europe by up to 40 percent to 15 days. Chinese investors are thus encouraged to participate in projects and companies in the region. The Chinese shipping company Cosco already sends ships on the Arctic route. With the “Xuelong” (snow dragon) fleet, Beijing wants to break not only the Arctic ice but also the Russian monopoly in this crucial class of ships – and thus pave the way for the People’s Republic through the Arctic. The then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quantified the scale of China’s activities in the Arctic: between 2012 and 2017, the People’s Republic invested almost $90 billion in the region, Pompeo told the Arctic Council.
But China has a problem: The People’s Republic is not an Arctic state, so it cannot make territorial claims. “To justify its plans, China is trying to create an Arctic identity,” explains Arctic expert Lanteigne. To do this, Beijing has come up with a special gambit – and has been simply defined as a “Near-Arctic state.” Thus, Beijing is trying to create a conceptual link to the region: China is directly affected by the climatic changes in the Arctic – for example, by heavy precipitation in Beijing, icy winters in Shanghai, or increasing pollution on the Chinese east coast. All of this justifies exerting more influence on the region.
In the face of such far-reaching plans, the actual Arctic states are reacting suspiciously: In Greenland, the “Inuit Ataqatigiit” party won the parliamentary election in April after campaigning against the mining of rare earths by Chinese companies. Finland’s government has halted Chinese plans to co-finance a railway.
Sweden’s relations with China have been strained anyway since Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller with a Swedish passport, was jailed in China for “illegally providing information abroad.” Stockholm, in turn, angered Beijing when it barred Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei from building the nationwide 5G network. Norway felt Beijing’s wrath when Liu Xiaobo was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Sales of Norway’s most important export, salmon, promptly plummeted in China – officially because of tighter veterinary controls.
The relationship between Canada and China is also more than difficult: Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei, has been under house arrest in Vancouver since the end of 2018 at the instigation of the US authorities. She is accused of bank fraud in connection with the circumvention of sanctions against Iran. In a disproportionately harsher retaliation, Beijing jailed two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in China. And in the conflict between China and the US, Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic represent another area of tension.
“That limits China’s options enormously,” says Arctic expert Lanteigne. But the front is not as closed as it appears. Beijing’s trump card is its economic strength. “Here in Norway, the Arctic regions are pushing the government in Oslo to cooperate with Beijing.” Similar developments can be seen in the other states.
But Beijing has another potential ally: Russia (China.Table reported on Russia’s possible cooperation with China against the West). Russia, of all countries, has just taken over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council and claims the entire Arctic for itself. In addition to an impressive icebreaker fleet, it has been expanding its military presence in the region for years: Bases are being reinforced, new weapons such as underwater drones with nuclear propulsion are being tested, and a major military exercise is held annually in the icy north. Added to this is the exploitation of raw materials. The production of liquefied natural gas alone is to be increased tenfold by 2035.
But exploration is expensive. Then there are the Western sanctions because of the annexation of Crimea, which was illegal under international law. They prevent Russian energy companies from receiving new bonds or energy-related equipment and technology from being supplied to Russia. And that leaves Russia with China as the only possible partner. It’s a difficult relationship. But Beijing seems to be succeeding in striking a balance between pushing ahead and being diplomatically considerate.
One thing is clear: Intense competition has broken out over the new key region for the global economy. For decades, the eight Arctic states have informally balanced their interests. Mostly they reacted to current events. But now, a new major power, China, is entering the Arctic arena. Lanteigne warns, “The institutions that have guaranteed the depoliticization and stabilization of the Arctic for decades may not be resilient enough to withstand these new demands.” Because China has a strategic plan. Beijing knows what it wants and how to achieve it.
Last Friday, Chinese human rights activist Wang Aizhong received an unpleasant phone call. Someone told him that his car had been damaged. He should come to the vehicle immediately to inspect the damage. Wang followed the request and found that there was no damage at all. Instead, he ran into a group of police officers who immediately took him into custody. Shortly after, the officers searched his home and confiscated 29 books, two computers, and a cell phone. Wang’s wife was also cited for questioning and asked about her husband’s contacts. He has since disappeared.
Wang has been a thorn in the side of the security forces in the People’s Republic ever since he and a handful of comrades-in-arms initiated the Southern Street Movement years ago, a group of dissidents from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong that seeks to inject democratic ideas into society through conspiratorial meetings. The timing of the arrest hardly coincided with two upcoming events: the Communist Party’s 100th birthday celebrations on July 1 and the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Friday.
In recent years, activists in the People’s Republic repeatedly disappeared as June 4 approached. Police and state security want to minimize the risk that opponents of the regime from the People’s Republic will remember the bloody suppression of the democracy movement in 1989 and possibly initiate a public debate about it. Warnings to dissidents, their surveillance, and the number of arrests thus always increase drastically before the anniversary. In 2014, Wang was already detained by the police for several weeks. At the same time, censorship rigorously prevents direct references in social media to the tragedy 32 years ago.
“For years, Beijing’s strategy of silencing critics was limited to the People’s Republic. Now, the Chinese government is using its growing influence in an attempt to rewrite history beyond the country’s borders,” US-based exiled human rights lawyer Teng Biao tells China.Table. “Where the regime does not exercise direct control, it tries to make analysts, opinion leaders, or journalists compliant in exchange for favors so that they will propagate the party’s version abroad,” Teng says.
In the Chinese special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, Beijing’s influence is already sufficiently strong to dilute the memories of June 4. In Macau, the police used a few slogans from organizers to justify canceling the event. They argue, among other things, calling the Tiananmen events a “massacre” would paint a false picture.
In Hong Kong, on the other hand, where hundreds of thousands of victims have been commemorated for decades, the authorities are relying on hygiene rules from the Covid regulations, even though there are currently no new infections in the city and a life that is as normal as possible. The organizers of the vigil, therefore, accuse the government of using the pandemic as a pretext. It is the second year in a row that authorities have banned the traditional vigil in Victoria Park. A march of remembrance that was supposed to have taken place last Sunday was also prevented.
Last year, thousands of people came together to commemorate the deaths of the past despite the ban, wearing masks and keeping their distance. One of them is Sunny Cheung. The 24-year-old student leader, whose representations to the US Congress in 2019 paved the way for the US Parliament’s implementation of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, has since fled Hong Kong for fear of prosecution. “It was a peaceful demonstration respecting all hygiene rules. Yet numerous leaders have been sentenced to prison because of it. The government is not concerned with Covid but with robbing the entire democracy movement in Hong Kong of its courage,” says Cheung in an interview with China.Table.
On the basis of the National Security Act, which only came into force in July 2020, the democracy activist Joshua Wong, among others, was convicted retroactively. Under these circumstances, it is unlikely that there will be an unauthorized riot this year, especially since the organizers have already called on people to remember the victims at home and via social media.
Those who do so publicly face arrest (China.Table reported). On Sunday, for example, the police detained 65-year-old Alexandra Wong, a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s protest movement, who had been walking alone through a park carrying a sign that read, “32, June 4, Tiananmen’s Lawsuit.” Wong was on her way to the Beijing liaison office before she was stopped. In 2019, the senior citizen had been abducted for more than a year after mass protests erupted in Hong Kong against Beijing’s growing influence while she was visiting neighboring Shenzhen. Wong had previously gained much attention for her support of student protests as a senior citizen and for frequently carrying the British flag during marches.
For a long time now, however, the state’s fight against memory has started much earlier: at school. Sunny Cheung remembers the scanty coverage of the Tiananmen massacre in his history book, which briefly mentioned a conflict between the military and students, but provided no background or details. “Our teacher watched documentaries with us about the real events and encouraged us to attend the commemorations. She said we should never forget this part of Chinese history. It was a shame for the government,” he says.
But the National Security Act makes the air in Hong Kong thinner and thinner for teachers. Because of its vague wording, the law leaves the authorities with plenty of leeway to stifle criticism of their policies. “In the current social environment, it is too risky to continue what I have been doing so far,” the South China Morning Post quotes teacher Peter Lee, who for 30 years previously explicitly taught his students the background and extent of the Tiananmen massacre in a kind of supplementary course in the run-up to the anniversary. Lee has taught secondary school mathematics in the Wan Chai district since 1989. He was in Beijing himself on June 4, 1989.
Authorities in Hong Kong have already disciplined 154 teachers, three of them with a revocation of their teaching licenses, for using “problematic” teaching materials to teach students about the background of the 2019 mass rallies. The education authority requires Hong Kong faculty to use “unbiased” content. “As professional educators, teachers should always be objective and impartial, and not allow political viewpoints of individuals or certain entities to influence their teaching, or even mislead and instill negative values in students.”
It was pioneering literary work: “When we started working on the first ‘Kapsel’ in 2015, there wasn’t a single story from the contemporary Chinese science fiction cosmos in German,” Lukas Dubro recalls. “Kapsel” is the title of the literary magazine that he publishes together with a few colleagues. The magazine came into being at the end of his literature studies at the FU Berlin. In the meantime, it has developed into a popular home for Chinese science fiction literature.
Dubro sees his magazine primarily as a “literary mediation initiative.” The creators try to provide as much access as possible to the stories of Chinese science fiction authors – through illustrations, interviews, and short stories. “We want to attract people to the stories who have never read a text from China before,” he says, summing up their mission.
Lukas Dubro sees great potential in providing insights about China through literature. After all, many authors wrote about topics that moved them and many Chinese. “Chi Hui wrote a coming-of-age story with giant beetles and Xia Jia a tribute to her grandfather, in which the grandfather of the main character starts a small revolution despite his illness. Jiang Bo works in an IT company and writes thrillers and space operas about big data and artificial intelligence,” says Dubro, citing a few examples.
He first became interested in China in 2005. Back then, he saw the Chinese punk band Subs at the Gleis 22 club in Muenster. “I had this one thought in my head after the concert: This country exists and I know nothing about it,” Dubro says. “What fascinated me most at the time was the Chinese writing.” Through his translation work, he has become more proficient in the language over the years. However, he has not yet managed to visit China. But that’s about to change: “I really hope to travel to China with the magazine one day.” Constantin Eckner
Military theme park as an excursion destination: In Yinchuan in northwest China, visitors can take a look inside a decommissioned submarine. In addition to the submarine, the People’s Liberation Army destroyer Yinchuan (107), named after the city, can also be seen, as well as aircraft and a railroad.
It’s a public slap in the face that China’s President Xi Jinping has handed out. Xi has called the country’s senior officials to order. He said Beijing needs to “get a grip on tone” in its communications with the world and should be “open and confident, but also modest and humble.” That Xi made this announcement via the Xinhua news agency is evidence of exasperation with the behavior and statements of his diplomats, who are increasingly engaged in ugly exchanges with foreign representatives. Xi wants to create a “trustworthy, lovable and respectable” image for China. This move does not come by chance, as the People’s Republic faces difficult events: the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre on June 4, and the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on July 1.
The timing of the arrest of human rights activist Wang Aizhong was no coincidence. Marcel Grzanna spoke with people who, whether they are 65 or 24, keep the memory of the victims of June 4, 1989, alive, even though the date is increasingly threatening to disappear from the history books. Beijing’s National Security Law means it’s only a matter of time.
“As a result of global warming, Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade,” says the “White Paper on China’s Arctic Policy” from Beijing’s perspective. Michael Radunski reveals which economic interests have led the People’s Republic to see itself as a “Near-Arctic state” and what role the dream of the “Polar Silk Road” plays in this.
For a brief moment, Sergey Lavrov drops the diplomatic mask. “It has long been perfectly clear to everyone that this is our territory, this is our country,” Russia’s Foreign Minister said last week, referring to the Arctic. “This is our land.” So when Russia took over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council a few days later, it should have been clear not only to the eight council members (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Russia and the United States) that Moscow lays claim to the entire 1.2 million square kilometers of that icy region.
And so Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide expressed deep concern as early as December: “We are observing a self-confident Russia in the region.” But new players are also suddenly pushing their way into the “strategically most important region,” she said. Søreide means China in particular.
In January 2018, Beijing published its own Arctic strategy for the first time. A white paper states the goal is to “understand, protect, develop and participate in the governance of the Arctic, to safeguard the common interests of all states and the international community.” But behind the diplomatic platitudes lie Beijing’s own interests: exploiting resources and raw materials, using short sea routes, and, above all, having a say in the region’s future. “China has been involved in the Arctic for a long time, but it is only with this white paper that Beijing has clearly set out how comprehensive China’s interest really is,” says Marc Lanteigne of the Arctic University in Tromsø, Norway, in an interview with China.Table.
In fact, the North Pole belongs to no one. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that the five states with land within the Arctic Circle – Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Norway – may only claim an economic zone 320 kilometers wide beginning at their respective mainland. Russia, however, sees the entire polar region as a continuation of its terrestrial territory underwater. For a long time, this discussion interested mainly academic circles, geologists and cartographers because the Arctic was covered by meter-thick ice, and even on land, the extreme conditions made life almost impossible.
But now the ice is melting. The Northeast Passage is navigable in summer; the Northwest Passage could soon follow. Both would shorten the sea routes between Asia, America, and Europe to a large extent. In addition, climate change is making previously inaccessible raw materials, rare earths and precious metals suddenly accessible. According to estimates, around 13 percent of the world’s oil and 30 percent of its gas reserves lie dormant in the Arctic. Diamonds, copper, platinum, and zinc are also suspected to be found there, as well as rare earths, which are essential for smartphone production and car batteries. Sand and gravel, urgently needed by the construction industry, could also be fetched.
All this has also been registered in Beijing. Here, the opening sea routes through the Arctic are seen as an integral part of the “New Silk Roads.” President Xi Jinping’s prestigious project – consisting of the terrestrial and maritime Silk Road – is to be completed with a Polar Silk Road. “As a result of global warming, the Arctic shipping routes are likely to become important transport routes for international trade,” China’s Arctic White Paper says.
Compared to the routes via the Suez and Panama Canal, the Northeast Passage would reduce the transport time from Asia to Europe by up to 40 percent to 15 days. Chinese investors are thus encouraged to participate in projects and companies in the region. The Chinese shipping company Cosco already sends ships on the Arctic route. With the “Xuelong” (snow dragon) fleet, Beijing wants to break not only the Arctic ice but also the Russian monopoly in this crucial class of ships – and thus pave the way for the People’s Republic through the Arctic. The then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo quantified the scale of China’s activities in the Arctic: between 2012 and 2017, the People’s Republic invested almost $90 billion in the region, Pompeo told the Arctic Council.
But China has a problem: The People’s Republic is not an Arctic state, so it cannot make territorial claims. “To justify its plans, China is trying to create an Arctic identity,” explains Arctic expert Lanteigne. To do this, Beijing has come up with a special gambit – and has been simply defined as a “Near-Arctic state.” Thus, Beijing is trying to create a conceptual link to the region: China is directly affected by the climatic changes in the Arctic – for example, by heavy precipitation in Beijing, icy winters in Shanghai, or increasing pollution on the Chinese east coast. All of this justifies exerting more influence on the region.
In the face of such far-reaching plans, the actual Arctic states are reacting suspiciously: In Greenland, the “Inuit Ataqatigiit” party won the parliamentary election in April after campaigning against the mining of rare earths by Chinese companies. Finland’s government has halted Chinese plans to co-finance a railway.
Sweden’s relations with China have been strained anyway since Gui Minhai, a Hong Kong bookseller with a Swedish passport, was jailed in China for “illegally providing information abroad.” Stockholm, in turn, angered Beijing when it barred Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei from building the nationwide 5G network. Norway felt Beijing’s wrath when Liu Xiaobo was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Sales of Norway’s most important export, salmon, promptly plummeted in China – officially because of tighter veterinary controls.
The relationship between Canada and China is also more than difficult: Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei, has been under house arrest in Vancouver since the end of 2018 at the instigation of the US authorities. She is accused of bank fraud in connection with the circumvention of sanctions against Iran. In a disproportionately harsher retaliation, Beijing jailed two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, in China. And in the conflict between China and the US, Beijing’s ambitions in the Arctic represent another area of tension.
“That limits China’s options enormously,” says Arctic expert Lanteigne. But the front is not as closed as it appears. Beijing’s trump card is its economic strength. “Here in Norway, the Arctic regions are pushing the government in Oslo to cooperate with Beijing.” Similar developments can be seen in the other states.
But Beijing has another potential ally: Russia (China.Table reported on Russia’s possible cooperation with China against the West). Russia, of all countries, has just taken over the chairmanship of the Arctic Council and claims the entire Arctic for itself. In addition to an impressive icebreaker fleet, it has been expanding its military presence in the region for years: Bases are being reinforced, new weapons such as underwater drones with nuclear propulsion are being tested, and a major military exercise is held annually in the icy north. Added to this is the exploitation of raw materials. The production of liquefied natural gas alone is to be increased tenfold by 2035.
But exploration is expensive. Then there are the Western sanctions because of the annexation of Crimea, which was illegal under international law. They prevent Russian energy companies from receiving new bonds or energy-related equipment and technology from being supplied to Russia. And that leaves Russia with China as the only possible partner. It’s a difficult relationship. But Beijing seems to be succeeding in striking a balance between pushing ahead and being diplomatically considerate.
One thing is clear: Intense competition has broken out over the new key region for the global economy. For decades, the eight Arctic states have informally balanced their interests. Mostly they reacted to current events. But now, a new major power, China, is entering the Arctic arena. Lanteigne warns, “The institutions that have guaranteed the depoliticization and stabilization of the Arctic for decades may not be resilient enough to withstand these new demands.” Because China has a strategic plan. Beijing knows what it wants and how to achieve it.
Last Friday, Chinese human rights activist Wang Aizhong received an unpleasant phone call. Someone told him that his car had been damaged. He should come to the vehicle immediately to inspect the damage. Wang followed the request and found that there was no damage at all. Instead, he ran into a group of police officers who immediately took him into custody. Shortly after, the officers searched his home and confiscated 29 books, two computers, and a cell phone. Wang’s wife was also cited for questioning and asked about her husband’s contacts. He has since disappeared.
Wang has been a thorn in the side of the security forces in the People’s Republic ever since he and a handful of comrades-in-arms initiated the Southern Street Movement years ago, a group of dissidents from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong that seeks to inject democratic ideas into society through conspiratorial meetings. The timing of the arrest hardly coincided with two upcoming events: the Communist Party’s 100th birthday celebrations on July 1 and the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on Friday.
In recent years, activists in the People’s Republic repeatedly disappeared as June 4 approached. Police and state security want to minimize the risk that opponents of the regime from the People’s Republic will remember the bloody suppression of the democracy movement in 1989 and possibly initiate a public debate about it. Warnings to dissidents, their surveillance, and the number of arrests thus always increase drastically before the anniversary. In 2014, Wang was already detained by the police for several weeks. At the same time, censorship rigorously prevents direct references in social media to the tragedy 32 years ago.
“For years, Beijing’s strategy of silencing critics was limited to the People’s Republic. Now, the Chinese government is using its growing influence in an attempt to rewrite history beyond the country’s borders,” US-based exiled human rights lawyer Teng Biao tells China.Table. “Where the regime does not exercise direct control, it tries to make analysts, opinion leaders, or journalists compliant in exchange for favors so that they will propagate the party’s version abroad,” Teng says.
In the Chinese special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, Beijing’s influence is already sufficiently strong to dilute the memories of June 4. In Macau, the police used a few slogans from organizers to justify canceling the event. They argue, among other things, calling the Tiananmen events a “massacre” would paint a false picture.
In Hong Kong, on the other hand, where hundreds of thousands of victims have been commemorated for decades, the authorities are relying on hygiene rules from the Covid regulations, even though there are currently no new infections in the city and a life that is as normal as possible. The organizers of the vigil, therefore, accuse the government of using the pandemic as a pretext. It is the second year in a row that authorities have banned the traditional vigil in Victoria Park. A march of remembrance that was supposed to have taken place last Sunday was also prevented.
Last year, thousands of people came together to commemorate the deaths of the past despite the ban, wearing masks and keeping their distance. One of them is Sunny Cheung. The 24-year-old student leader, whose representations to the US Congress in 2019 paved the way for the US Parliament’s implementation of the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, has since fled Hong Kong for fear of prosecution. “It was a peaceful demonstration respecting all hygiene rules. Yet numerous leaders have been sentenced to prison because of it. The government is not concerned with Covid but with robbing the entire democracy movement in Hong Kong of its courage,” says Cheung in an interview with China.Table.
On the basis of the National Security Act, which only came into force in July 2020, the democracy activist Joshua Wong, among others, was convicted retroactively. Under these circumstances, it is unlikely that there will be an unauthorized riot this year, especially since the organizers have already called on people to remember the victims at home and via social media.
Those who do so publicly face arrest (China.Table reported). On Sunday, for example, the police detained 65-year-old Alexandra Wong, a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s protest movement, who had been walking alone through a park carrying a sign that read, “32, June 4, Tiananmen’s Lawsuit.” Wong was on her way to the Beijing liaison office before she was stopped. In 2019, the senior citizen had been abducted for more than a year after mass protests erupted in Hong Kong against Beijing’s growing influence while she was visiting neighboring Shenzhen. Wong had previously gained much attention for her support of student protests as a senior citizen and for frequently carrying the British flag during marches.
For a long time now, however, the state’s fight against memory has started much earlier: at school. Sunny Cheung remembers the scanty coverage of the Tiananmen massacre in his history book, which briefly mentioned a conflict between the military and students, but provided no background or details. “Our teacher watched documentaries with us about the real events and encouraged us to attend the commemorations. She said we should never forget this part of Chinese history. It was a shame for the government,” he says.
But the National Security Act makes the air in Hong Kong thinner and thinner for teachers. Because of its vague wording, the law leaves the authorities with plenty of leeway to stifle criticism of their policies. “In the current social environment, it is too risky to continue what I have been doing so far,” the South China Morning Post quotes teacher Peter Lee, who for 30 years previously explicitly taught his students the background and extent of the Tiananmen massacre in a kind of supplementary course in the run-up to the anniversary. Lee has taught secondary school mathematics in the Wan Chai district since 1989. He was in Beijing himself on June 4, 1989.
Authorities in Hong Kong have already disciplined 154 teachers, three of them with a revocation of their teaching licenses, for using “problematic” teaching materials to teach students about the background of the 2019 mass rallies. The education authority requires Hong Kong faculty to use “unbiased” content. “As professional educators, teachers should always be objective and impartial, and not allow political viewpoints of individuals or certain entities to influence their teaching, or even mislead and instill negative values in students.”
It was pioneering literary work: “When we started working on the first ‘Kapsel’ in 2015, there wasn’t a single story from the contemporary Chinese science fiction cosmos in German,” Lukas Dubro recalls. “Kapsel” is the title of the literary magazine that he publishes together with a few colleagues. The magazine came into being at the end of his literature studies at the FU Berlin. In the meantime, it has developed into a popular home for Chinese science fiction literature.
Dubro sees his magazine primarily as a “literary mediation initiative.” The creators try to provide as much access as possible to the stories of Chinese science fiction authors – through illustrations, interviews, and short stories. “We want to attract people to the stories who have never read a text from China before,” he says, summing up their mission.
Lukas Dubro sees great potential in providing insights about China through literature. After all, many authors wrote about topics that moved them and many Chinese. “Chi Hui wrote a coming-of-age story with giant beetles and Xia Jia a tribute to her grandfather, in which the grandfather of the main character starts a small revolution despite his illness. Jiang Bo works in an IT company and writes thrillers and space operas about big data and artificial intelligence,” says Dubro, citing a few examples.
He first became interested in China in 2005. Back then, he saw the Chinese punk band Subs at the Gleis 22 club in Muenster. “I had this one thought in my head after the concert: This country exists and I know nothing about it,” Dubro says. “What fascinated me most at the time was the Chinese writing.” Through his translation work, he has become more proficient in the language over the years. However, he has not yet managed to visit China. But that’s about to change: “I really hope to travel to China with the magazine one day.” Constantin Eckner
Military theme park as an excursion destination: In Yinchuan in northwest China, visitors can take a look inside a decommissioned submarine. In addition to the submarine, the People’s Liberation Army destroyer Yinchuan (107), named after the city, can also be seen, as well as aircraft and a railroad.
