China Aid Association
(Qingdao City—August 16th, 2012) China Aid Association released a news report in Chinese on Sunday last week, August 11, 2012, criticizing the perverse use of the press to publicly disclose and shame citizen’s, as engaged in by Qingdao Evening News which publicized on Thursday, August 9, 2012, “violators of China’s family planning policy in Pingdu City” who “failed to pay the ‘social fostering fee.’ ChinaAid stated that giving birth can not be illegal. (See the report: https://chinaaid.org/2012/08/shandong-qingdao-evening-news-disclosed.html )
On the next day (August, 12, 2012), ChinaAid published this news report in English. Two days later, on Tuesday, August 14, 2012, the English version of the influential Global Times, a newspaper run by the Chinese government, posted an article entitled “family planning policy violators revealed”, stating that “A US-based human rights group, China Aid Association, has criticized the Qingdao News, a newspaper based in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province, for publicizing the names and other personal information of 10 couples who violated China’s family planning policy, saying it infringed on their human rights.” (See the report: https://chinaaid.org/2012/08/global-times-family-planning-policy.html）]
The Global Times interviewed an official surnamed Liu from the Population and Family Planning Commission of Qingdao. He said, “Publicizing the names of ‘people who failed to pay the social fostering fee on time’ has been a conventional practice in Shandong Province since 2010”. This official denied that publicizing the names was a human rights issue, arguing that the purpose is to make people think twice about having a second or even a third child.
A journalist from the Qingdao News told the Global Times that the paper was only following a request of the family planning commission.
The Global Times also interviewed Lü Yougang whose name was published in the paper in March for “giving birth illegally.” He said that he simply did not have the money to pay the fostering fee and he felt ashamed that his name was published.
The Global Times concluded the report saying that “according to local regulations, a family that has a second child must pay between two and six times the average annual disposable income of local residents. In Qingdao, this can range from 57,314 yuan ($9,012) to 171,402 yuan.” ($26,951)
The Qingdao News’ publicizing of the so-called “family planning violators” and the report of the Global Times demonstrate the harshness of Qingdao’s family planning policy. The outrageous fine set by the city, in particular, exceeds the fine imposed in other regions. Is there a reason for this? China Aid Association’s answer is “yes!”
In China, the policies and regulations of a region are under the direct influence of the local government or a particular top leader, especially the Secretary of the Committee of the CPC. Li Qun, the Secretary of the Qingdao Municipal Committee of the CPC has a background in the Youth League. From 1996 to 1998, he rose from Deputy Secretary of the Youth League Committee, to Secretary, and then became a member of the Youth League Central Committee. He spent six months studying in the United States at the University of New Haven from June to December, 2000, and wrote a best-selling book ““I Was an Assistant to an American Mayor.” He is now a prominent figure in the bureaucracy of Shandong Province. In 2001, Li Qun was appointed Deputy Secretary and mayor of Linyi. When he was the Secretary of Shandong Linyi Municipal Committee of the CPC and the Director of the Standing Committee of the Municipal People’s Congress between November 2002 and March 2007, Li Qun brutally enforced the family planning policy and is considered to be largely responsible for the targeted persecution of Chen Guangcheng.
The timeline f major events in the Chen Guangcheng case below can illustrate this point. (Refer to Dr. Teng Biao’s blog, reports by Ms. Zhang Min of Radio Free Asia and China’s official media.”
1. On July 9, 2004, Shandong Linyi Municipal Committee of the CPC and Linyi Municipal People’s Government issued the “Decisions about reinforcing population and family planning work in a new era”, (2004) No. 18, committing to implementing more strict family planning measures. The “Decisions” began to be implemented by the end of the year.
2. On February 14, 2005, Linyi Municipal Government issued another official document, essentially stating that citizens’ submissiveness had been overestimated, and that carrying out regulations according to law did not work and that more harsh traditional communist methods of persuasion were necessary to force compliance.
3. From March 2005 onward, the three districts and nine counties of Linyi City launched a new round of a severely escalating, violent family limiting campaign, including incarcerating people., beating people, detaining people, forced sterilization, forced abortion, compulsory attendance at “education” classes and charging “education” fees.
4. In mid-April 2005, the self-taught blind human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng and his wife Yuan Weijing from Dongshigu Village, Shuanghou Town, Yinan County, Linyi region, began to investigate this. In that month, Radio Free Asia and other oversees media organizations conducted interviews and reported on it.
5. In July 2005, based on Chen Guangcheng’s oral account, volunteers produced an article entitled “The government violates family planning laws; ‘sterilization’ in Linyi city implicates 10 generations of a family”, which evoked an outcry via the internet. After August 12, Chen Guangcheng and his wife were put under residential surveillance.
6. In August{?} 2005, a group of Christians and non-Christian human rights lawyers went to Linyi. In late August, Dr. Teng Biao published “A journal on the investigation of family planning in Linyi” which evoked enormous repercussions both in China and abroad.
7. At 8pm on September 7, 2005, Chen Guangcheng was kidnapped in Beijing by six police agents from Shandong Province, taken to his home and put under house arrest. The house arrest lasted 197 days until March 11, 2006.
8. On February 8 and 9, 2006, Dr. Xu Zhiyong published two open letters to Li Qun, the Secretary of Linyi Municipal Committee of the CPC.
9. At about 9pm on March 11, 2006, Chen Guangcheng and others were arrested at home while still under house arrest. On March 22, he was officially arrested for “being on the suspicion of intentional destruction of public property.”
10. On July 5, 2006, Republican US Senator Chuck Hagel, Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, published a written statement on “China human rights and rule of law updates”, stating that the US congress and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China were very concerned about the arrest of China Shandong’s blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng. Hagel also called on the Chinese government to respect Chen Guangcheng’s rights and allow him to resume his involvement in important humanitarian work.
11. On August 24, 2006, the Yinan County People’s Court sentenced Chen Guangcheng to four years and three months in prison for “intentional destruction of property” and “gathering people to disturb traffic order.”
12. On September 9, 2010, Chen was released and again put under house arrest with his wife Yuan Weijing at their home in Dongshigu village. He suffered brutal torture and miraculously escaped from his home on April 22, 2012. Helped by friends, he arrived at Beijing and went into hiding in the US Embassy for six days. Then he was sent to Chaoyang Hospital and put under house arrest there. With the persistent efforts of China Aid Association, US Senator Chris Smith, NJ, and Congressman Frank Wolf, VA, etc., and after a secret negotiation between the Chinese and the US governments, Chen Guangcheng arrived in the United States with his family on May 19, 2012, and started his life as a visiting scholar at New York University in NYC.
Based on the facts and information listed above, it should be noted that six months after Chen Guangcheng was sentenced to prison, Li Qun, the Secretary of Linyi Municipal Committee of the CPC, was promoted to the position of the Minister of Shandong Ministry of Propaganda in March 2007. In June of the same year, he became a standing member of the provincial committee. In November 2010, about two months after Chen Guangcheng and his wife had been put under severe house arrest right after his release from the prison, Li Qun was promoted again and became the Secretary of Qingdao Municipal Committee of the CPC, which coincides with the time-frame quoted by the official of Qingdao Family Planning Commission in the report of the Global Times, that publicizing the name, address, and other personal information of ‘people who failed to pay the social fostering fee on time’ had become a conventional practice in Shandong Province.
Therefore, it was the under the leadership of Li Qun that Shandong Linyi Municipal Committee and the government started a brutal and violent family limiting campaign, which led to Chen Guangcheng speaking up for victims and protecting their rights, and as a result, Chen was brutally persecuted, which became a world-wide known case of draconian human rights violations. The years when Chen Guandcheng and his wife were severely persecuted overlapped with the years when Li Qun was acclaimed by his bosses and enjoyed a series of noteworthy promotions rising from being the official of a prefecture-level city to that of a provincial-level official of Qingdao City. This explains why the local township and village officials who persecuted Chen Guangcheng were so brazen and fearless and to this day they still have not suffered any consequences for their behaviors.
This once again confirms that the success in implementing the enforced family birth limiting policy is a hard standard for the punishment and award of government officials, i.e., so-called “family planning” is a method devised by the central government as a way to punish and award officials and it serves as a decisive vote on the appointment and dismissal of officials. As the Chinese government has repeated in its propaganda in the past several decades, family planning is a basic national policy. As a result, numerous officials have carried out this violent policy, treading on the corpses of bleeding baby fetuses and violated, wounded, traumatized women to climb up the mountain of power. And Li Qun has brought his violent, evil “family planning” methods to Qingdao City.
The whole world ought to closely watch and do something about it. Let all of churches pray for the victims of family planning policy passionately. May the Lord Jesus Christ show his mercy and help!
China Aid Contacts
Rachel Ritchie, English Media Director
Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.chinaaid.org
