The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China is appalled by the decision of the Chinese government to take this action.

Chinese officials had expressed anger at a documentary the channel aired last November. Melissa Chan did not even play a part in making that documentary. They have also expressed unhappiness with the general editorial content on Al Jazeera English and accused Ms Chan of violating rules and regulations that they have not specified.

This is the most extreme example of a recent pattern of using journalist visas in an attempt to censor and intimidate foreign correspondents in China (see details below*).

The FCCC believes that foreign news organisations, not the Chinese government, have the right to choose who works for them in China, in line with international standards.

Melissa’s expulsion followed 3 months of uncertainty during which time she was issued short term press credentials rather than the standard one-year accreditation. When her final one-month accreditation was not renewed she was obliged to leave the country because reporters are not issued Chinese residence permits without such accreditation.

Melissa Chan is a member of the FCCC board.

The FCCC views this matter as a grave threat to foreign reporters’ ability to work in China.

For further details on this matter please contact fcccadmin@gmail.com.

*At the end of last year an FCCC survey (with additional research) found the following regarding visas for foreign correspondents in China:

• Over the past two years 27 foreign reporters were made to wait for more than four months for visa approvals. Thirteen of these had to wait for more than six months and were still waiting at the time of the survey.
• Three requests presented in 2009 had not received a response, which in practice meant they had been denied.
• Twenty eight permanent postings or reporting trips had been cancelled since 2009 because applications for the required journalistic visas were rejected or ignored by the Chinese authorities.
• In six cases foreign reporters say they were told by the Foreign Ministry officials that their bureaux’ visa applications had been rejected or put on hold due to the content of the bureaux’ or the applicant’s previous coverage of Chinese affairs.

PANELISTS:
Joel Haggard, Asia-Pacific vice president of the U.S. Meat Export Federation
Markus Klinger, EU Delegation to China attache
Michael Boddington,
founder-CEO of Boddington Consulting, a Sino-Australian agricultural advisory advising investors in farming, meat production in China.

We have also invited a Chinese speaker and we are waiting for his confirmation.

DATE: May 8 (Tuesday)
TIME: 1:30-3:00pm
VENUE: Embassy of Ireland, 3 Ritan Dong Lu, phone: 6532 2691
RSVP: to fcccadmin@gmail.com
ENTRANCE: free to members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members

The screening is followed by a Q&A with the director.

DATE: May 3 (Thursday)
TIME: 6-7:30pm
VENUE: Sealink Bar, Second Floor, 6 Gongti Xi Lu, Chaoyang district, 朝阳区工体西路6号 (on top of METRO restaurant, opposite French Cultural Centre), phone: 65525529
RSVP: to fcccadmin@gmail.com
ENTRANCE: free to members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members

Report Summary:
The conflicting mandates and lack of coordination among Chinese government agencies have stoked tensions in the South China Sea, many of which use this issue to try to increase their power and budget. Repeated proposals to establish a more centralised mechanism have foundered while the only agency with a coordinating mandate, the foreign ministry, does not have the authority or resources to manage other actors.

The Chinese navy’s use of maritime tensions to justify its modernisation, and nationalist sentiment around territorial claims, further compound the problem. But more immediate conflict risks lie in the growing number of law enforcement and paramilitary vessels playing an increasing role in disputed territories without a clear legal framework. They have been involved in most of the recent incidents, including the prolonged standoff between China and the Philippines in April 2012 in Scarborough Shoal.

While Beijing took measures in mid-2011 to moderate its approach in order to repair damage done to regional relationships that had led to an expanded U.S. role in the region, this is unlikely to be sustainable unless China adopts consistent overarching policy executed uniformly throughout the different levels of government.

DATE: Tuesday, April 24
TIME: 10-11:30am
VENUE: Royal Norwegian Embassy – 1, Dong Yi Jie, Sanlitun 100600 Beijing (enter from 3rd ring road South direction) – 挪威使馆，朝阳区三里屯东一街1号, phone: 8531 9600
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members
REGISTRATION: email fcccadmin@gmail.com so we know numbers and for security clearance
**Bring passport or photo ID**

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Stephanie T. Kleine-Ahlbrandt is the North East Asia Project Director at the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Beijing where she supervises the work of a small team of analysts responsible for research and analysis on the role of China in conflict areas around the world. Previously, she was an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and before that worked for 10 years for the United Nations where she was responsible for cooperation with the People’s Republic of China; served as Officer-in-Charge of the Asia-Pacific region; and served as Desk Officer for several African countries.
Previously, Ms. Kleine-Ahlbrandt worked in the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina (1996), investigated genocide and other human rights violations for the United Nations in Rwanda (1994-1995), and worked with the Legal Affairs Directorate of the Council of Europe (1993-1994).

International Crisis Group: The ICG gives advice to governments, and intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations, European Union and World Bank, on the prevention and resolution of deadly conflict. Its primary goals are a combination of field-based analysis, policy prescription, and high-level advocacy, with key roles being played by a senior management team experienced in government and by an active Board of Trustees containing many former senior diplomats. ICG has analysts working in over 50 crisis-affected countries and territories across four continents.

The work of Qiu Mai (aka Michael Cherney) has been described as “the cutting-edge demonstration of artistic globalisation.” If Asian artists can so readily “come West,” then what is to prevent large numbers of future Western artists from “going Asian”? Or, like Qiu Mai/Michael Cherney, going both ways at once, both American and Chinese, modern and traditional?

Michael will show some of his own work, and discuss how it fits into the grand sweep of China’s classical art traditions. He will also talk about how those traditions are themselves holding up amid China’s headlong rush into modernity and globalisation.

DATE: Apr 25 (Wednesday)
TIME: 4:30-6pm
VENUE: FACE Bar, 26 Dongcaoyuan, Gongti Nanlu – 工体南路东草园26号
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB at the door for non-members
REGISTRATION: at fcccadmin@gmail.com

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
In his award-winning work as a photographer, calligrapher and book artist, Michael Cherney draws on the subtleties of China’s most scholarly and esoteric traditions.  He is also well acquainted with the journalistic side of the photography business, and how art connects to the world at large:  his involvement in photography began with works left behind by his grandfather, Charles Hoff, the New York Daily News photojournalist who took the iconic photograph of the 1937 Hindenburg explosion.

Based in Beijing, Michael is a successful artist whose works can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, the Harvard University Art Museums, the Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum and others.

In the words of Jerome Silbergeld, P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Professor of Chinese Art History at Princeton University: “One would be hard-pressed to find a “more Chinese” artist than Qiu Mai (b. 1969)…  Qiu Mai’s art is less provocative than it is intellectually engaging, meditative, and often simply beautiful. What is provocative is his identity: Qiu Mai is the studio name for Michael Cherney, born in New York. Cherney’s work is the cutting-edge demonstration of artistic globalization.”

This is one of the issues to be discussed by Britta Ostrom, executive director of the Beijing-based non-profit organisation Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR CSR).

DATE: Apr 23 (Monday)
TIME: 3-4:30pm
VENUE: Embassy of Sweden 3, Dongzhimenwai Dajie, Sanlitun, Chaoyang District, phone: 6532 9790
ENTRANCE: free to FCCC members, 80 RMB at the door for non-members
REGISTRATION: at fcccadmin@gmail.com

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Britta Ostrom has extensive experience working in children’s rights and has been the executive director of CCR CSR since it began its work in August 2009. She was regional director for Europe of Save the Children, Sweden (SCS) from 2004 to 2009. She was SCS regional director for Southeast/East Asia & the Pacific, based in Vietnam, for five years, and was also in charge of an EU-funded child protection project with the Vietnamese government in Hanoi. Ms Ostrom, who is from Sweden, used to be a teacher.

The Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility, the first such centre in the world, investigates and advises on what can be done by all firms, big and small, foreign and Chinese, to ensure the leaders, workers and consumers of tomorrow are treated with respect today,  while they are still children. The organisation recently launched a parenting booklet, “Distant but still Close”, and has begun training hundreds of factory workers on how to communicate more effectively with their offspring who might be thousands of miles away. The Center was involved in consultations for the new Children’s Rights and Business Principles (CRBP); the global launch was in London last month. CCR CSR is working on how to implement the Principles in China.

From the personal to the political, countless stories are emerging from China’s urban and rural areas which illuminate the diversified life aspirations of Chinese homosexuals. This event explores some of those stories, with an exclusive preview screening of “The Siberian Butterfly”, a screening of the 2010 documentary “Comrades, you’ve worked hard!” and a talk with renowned queer activists Wei Xiaogang and Xu Bin who will elaborate on the varied layers of gay life in China.

DATE: April 16 (Monday)
TIME: 4:30-6pm
VENUE: French Embassy, 60 Tianze Lu, Chaoyang District, 北京市朝阳区天泽路60号
RSVP: to fcccadmin@gmail.com
ENTRANCE: free to members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Wei Xiaogang is one of China’s leading gay activists, recognized both nationally and internationally as a queer filmmaker and a queer organizer. In 2007 he founded the LGBT webcast “Queer Comrades” (www.queercomrades.com) for which he has directed more than 50 webcast episodes and documentaries. To date, the Queer Comrades programs have accumulated over 20 million views worldwide.
In 2011, Wei Xiaogang became the head of the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, an NGO which conducts education and provides a supportive platform for informational initiatives regarding issues of gender, sexuality and sexual health.

Xu Bin has been an LGBT rights activist in China since 1995.  She was co-founder of the Lavender Phoenix and the Institute for Tongzhi Studies, both US based organizations in support of LGBT activism in China. In 2005 Bin Xu founded Common Language (www.tongyulala.org), a Beijing based LGBT rights organization with focus on lesbian, bisexual women and transgender people in China.  In 2008 Bin Xu also co-founded Beijing LGBT Center and currently serves on its board of directors. Bin Xu has helped foster LGBT groups across China and succeeded in setting up Chinese Lala Alliance, a cross-regional joint effort to provide a sustainable framework for movement building in Chinese LBT communities.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARIES:
“Comrades, you’ve worked hard!” brings you the full story of the first ever Mr. Gay China Pageant. Billed as a celebration of gay confidence, the event was cancelled by the police just hours before it was supposed to start, causing a media storm inside China and abroad.
From the early preparations to the final blow-out, this documentary closely follows the organizers and participants of the Mr. Gay China Pageant as they overcome their fears to become gay stars and as they try to make sense of the event’s politically tinted shut-down.

Director: Wei Xiaogang
Production: Queer Comrades, China, 2010
Running Time: 20 minutes

“The Siberian Butterfly” is a documentary that explores issues of creativity and sexual identity in an intimate portrait of a Chinese folk artist. He learned the traditional Chinese art of paper-cutting from his grandmother in his birthplace of Shaanxi Province, China. But as a child of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), his homosexuality was deeply repressed by social convention, and so he followed the path of most men of his generation, getting married and having children. Still, he found an outlet for his true identity through the themes in his artwork. In this richly woven exploration of the creative process, the artist`s inner world is revealed as he patiently carves out space for his true identity through his paper cuts. Now that his children are grown and he has moved to Beijing, he discovers who he really was all along, calling himself  The Siberian Butterfly.

Director: Anna Sophie Loewenberg
Production: Queer Comrades, China, 2012
Running Time: 30 minutes

Join us for a panel discussion with Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn and Chinese micro-bloggers.

DATE: Apr 11 (Wednesday)
TIME: 10-11:30am
VENUE: Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Liangmahe Nanlu 4, 荷兰王国驻华大 使馆 – 北京, 中 华人民共和国北京市亮马河 南路4号, Phone: 010 85320200
RSVP: to fcccadmin@gmail.com
ENTRANCE: free to members, 80 RMB on the door to non-members

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Kaiser Kuo, Director of International Communications at Baidu.com, was previously a technology correspondent for Red Herring magazine, and also worked as director of digital strategy, China, for Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing. Kaiser is a former member of the rock band Tang Dynasty. In 2010 he started the Sinica show, a current affairs podcast based in Beijing that invites prominent China journalists and China-watchers to participate in uncensored discussions about Chinese political and economic affairs.

Jeremy Goldkorn is the founder, editor and publisher of the popular China media website Danwei.org.  The site has tracked the changes in China’s media and Internet on a daily basis since 2003, and features video interviews with people in culture and the media in China. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, he has lived in Beijing since 1995. With Kaiser Kuo he hosts the weekly Sinica podcast.

复活节快乐! Happy Easter! But to hell with all the festivities!

Coups Murder Betrayal Intrigue… hear all about it at this month’s FCCC drinks!

If you haven’t yet had your fill of Chinese politics – the story that never stops – then come along and join in at the Bookworm where we’ll be speculating like mad hatters about what the hell is actually going on in this country over a few glasses of delicious discounted alcohol.

See you tonight!

DATE: Friday,  April 6
TIME: 6:30-10:30pm
VENUE: The Bookworm
ENTRANCE: free, non-members very welcome as always
DIZZY DRINKS DISCOUNT: for FCCC members on Carlsberg and Yanjing draught beer; bottled Tsing Tao, house wine and mixed drinks