Content in Brief

1. New: "Civil Society in EU-China relations"/ Chinese Newsletter under way
2. How to deal with China: Practice and Debate
3. China and Climate Change: Views from the Government and Civil Society
4. China and Human Rights: The Cases of Liu Xiaobo and Tan Zuoren
5. Labour Rights and Trade: Post-MFA Era

a) Civil Society in European-Chinese Relations. Challenges of Cooperation

German Asia Foundation for the EU-China Civil Society Forum, January 2010, 104 p. 5 € (postage not included). To purchase, please contact: vertrieb@asienhaus.de or

download from here.

Our latest brochure gives a short summary on the development and current state of the Chinese-European relations, analyzes the possibilities of European NGOs in influencing EU policies, discusses the China images of European NGOs, and describes the specific challenges and dilemmas in Chinese-European NGO cooperation.

It comprises articles of Jörn-Carsten Gottwald, Christa Wichterich and Nora Sausmikat.

b) Our upcoming Chinese newsletter

We are preparing a Chinese newsletter, on one hand, to inform and communicate better European developments with our Chinese partners and readers, and on the other hand, to introduce the wonderful work of the Chinese NGOs to be known by others. We sincerely look for your participation. You can subscribe it or/and recommend your friends to subscribe from here. If you identify Chinese articles from the civil society which match with our aims, please kindly inform us at staphany.wong@woek.de.

c) Our English and German newsletters

We have launched our German and English newsletters in 2008 and 2009 respectively, to document and inform about developments regarding the European-Chinese relations, social and environmental issues in China as well as the operations of Chinese non-governmental organisations. We would like to invite you to help us promoting them, to bring the newsletters to members of your own network. You are most welcomed to forward our newsletter through your email lists, or/and encourage your networks to subscribe them. English subscription and German subscription forms are found here. We believe more sharing, exchanges and mutual communications would be the key for all of us to improve our work.

a) Commentary: EuropeAid - Civil Society Dialogue between Europe and China a False Promise?

EuropeAid, the institution in charge of EU development aid, published a call for proposals on the topic "EU-China Civil Society Dialogue" earlier this month. Klaus Fritsche (EU-China Civil Society), however, doubts if such a call for proposal, in terms of its motive, structure and application methods, is by any means user-friendly, let alone being helpful in promoting dialogue.

Click for the full commentary here

b) How to Think About China?

Written by Immanuel Wallerstein, taking into account China's role in the new world order, this article provides some interesting viewpoints on how to think about China. Although this article mainly reflects the debates in the US, similiar views can be found in Europe, too. 

Click here for Wallenstein's article

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen has been marked as a disappointing Christmas present for many environmentalists in 2009. Before it is long gone and forgotten, a collection of articles has been published to document its course, its significance and its failure. 

a) Copenhagen in Chinese: What did the Official Version say and how did the Civil Society and Media Act?

Staphany Wong (Werkstatt Ökonomie e.V./EU-China-Civil Society Forum) documents the Chinese civil society's and Chinese media's attitude before, during and after the UN Climate Change 2009 Conference in Copenhagen, especially on their responses towards the Chinese Government. The document shows that the Chinese way of reporting is rather different from what European readers might have read about the Copenhagen Conference, and how it shaped the public's opinion of it. Chinese and German versions are also available.

Download the full backgrounder here

b) New English Resources made available by Chinese Civil Society

Since January 2010, China Environment Brief, an online English newsletter has been published by the China Green News, an initiative of the Chinese NGO Green Earth Volunteers (GEV). This weekly newsletter offers the latest briefings and discussions on environmental issues in China. You can check it out here or subscribe it directly from here.

C) Sad but true: Award-winning pictures of Lu Guang

Freelance photographer Lu Guang's documentary project "Pollution in China", has won him the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography in New York City. Through his artistic works, we can see that the environmental problems, are inevitably social problems, as well.

For more photos click here!

The 11-year imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo at Christmas 2009, the author of Charter 08, followed with the 5-year sentence of Tan Zuoren, an environmental activist who tried to document the school collapses of the Sichuan Earthquake 2008, have sent chills to many, who are concerned with China’s human rights conditions. A collection of analysis is presented here to show different views on China’s human rights development.

a) To Touch On the Root of the Evil: Who is afraid of Liu Xiaobo? 

The article is contributed by Tienchi Martin-Liao, President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center. She gives a detailed analysis of Liu Xiaobo's case, the primary drafter and signatory of Charter 08, prominent Chinese writer and activist of the past two decades. In this article, she explains why, among many other activists, Liu has been singled out and punished heavily. And how his fate, as well as other recently-sentenced activists', shows the Chinese Communist Party's further tightening grip on human rights.

Click here to read the full article

b) Open letter to the President Hu Jintao

The European Association for Chinese Studies represents more than 800 scholars from 36 countries, mostly in Europe, who dedicate their efforts to the understanding and promotion of China. In this Open Letter they ask for the release of Liu Xiaobo, who on December 25, 2009 was sentenced to 11 years of prison on charges of "agitation activities", namely the drafting of the Charter 08.

Click here to read the open letter (in english and chinese)

c) Good man from Sichuan: Tan Zuoren

Tao Zuoren, who is now known as "the good man from Sichuan", was sentenced to 5-year imprisionment on 9 Februray 2010, for “inciting subversion of state power”. The evidence of his crime was a memo he wrote years ago on June Fourth, while the sentence is believed to silence him for his investigation into the collapse of schools in the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, claiming almost 90,000 lives. Tan estimated at least 5,600 students were among the dead.

Activists in China have kindly translated the count's indictment and Tan's self-defence statement from the first hearing in August 2009. These two pieces, may give a brief understanding on how the legal system "works" in China to silence its human rights defenders.

d) New publication on "Europe, China and the expectations for human rights"

Duncan Freeman and Gustaaf Geeraerts, Europe, China and the expectations for human rights Asia Paper, Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, Brussels, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2010, 21p. 

Contrary to beliefs widely held in Europe, this report shows that people in China have a positive view of their human rights. Furthermore, when the data is analyzed by age group, occupation and education level, it shows that younger, economically better off and educated Chinese have a more positive view of their human rights. It is an interesting study to look at the differences between Chinese and Europeans in the views of human rights.

Click here to read the full text

Five years has passed since the Multi-Fibre Agreement, a thirty-year old quota system for textile and garment exports from developing countries to developed countries, was ended. The two following reports, try to analyze the speculations prior to the MFA expiration, such as soaring Chinese and Indian exports, declining trade for smaller countries, cheaper prices for consumers in the developed countries, further job loss of textile and garment workers in the developed countries, if they have become true.

a) Investigation and Monitoring of the Post-MFA Impact in China

This research  from Globalization Monitor, aims to analyse, shortly before the fifth anniversary of the Post-MFA era, what have been “accomplished” and how many of the speculations have become reality, in terms of trade data, employment trend and labour conditions in the textile and garment sector, and how this sector in  China aims to survive the financial crisis and at what cost.  

Click here for the full text - a Chinese version is as well available

b) The social impact of the liberalised world market for textiles and clothing – Strategies of trade unions and women’s organisations

SÜDWIND-Institut Germany has written a study,  focusing  the social impact of the liberalized world market for textiles and clothing after the expiry of the quota system and explores the situation of workers in China, South Africa and Germany (the EU).

Click here for the full text