Feature Story

Bao Pu describes China's 'ultimate problem':
'the Communist Party sits above the law.'

BEIJING'S SUPREME 'SECRET' REVEALED

By Jay Scott Kanes
(First in a Series)


HONG KONG – There’s a huge “secret”, one that China’s leaders continually use heavy-handed repression and injustice to prevent its people from knowing.

“Chinese leaders hold such strength and power. Why do they even care if someone writes a few articles pointing out the widespread social injustice in China?” asked Beijing-born dissident, human-rights activist and publisher Bao Pu in a recent interview. Forty-three-year-old Bao lives in Hong Kong.

“Well, there’s one big secret, something everyone should know,” he said. “The secret is that there’s no justification – no real need – for continued one-party, authoritarian rule. It doesn’t have to be that way in China. Once people realize it’s not even a good way, then the (ruling) Communist Party will have problems.

“The Chinese leaders don’t deny that rule-of-law, democracy and human rights are good things. Instead, they argue that we’ve got a system better than the West at safeguarding these. But it’s not true. So this falsehood becomes part of the big secret. Anyone with a certain influence in telling the truth forms a threat because it doesn’t take much for people to realize.


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VIETNAM -- When bears emerge from Asia’s remaining “bile farms”, veterinarians get really busy. Sometimes the medical work amounts to “mission impossible”.

Vets euthanized one of 19 moon bears recently taken by the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) from an illegal bile farm where the animals had lived in cramped cargo-container cages. The bear’s abdomen was “rotting away”.

AAF veterinary director Dr Heather Bacon described the animal’s abdomen as so necrotic and ravaged with disease that his organs looked unrecognisable. She saw sure evidence that the adult-male bear, named Raspberry, had been tapped for bile despite that being illegal in Vietnam.

“Bile extraction caused irreparable damage to his organs, and he must have been in extreme pain,” Bacon said. “He deliberately was kept alive through inappropriate use of antibiotics so the farmer could squeeze more bile from the dying bear.”

She called the condition of Raspberry’s internal organs shocking, the worst she’s seen. “At his health-check, we noted a small (3mm) abdomen wound oozing pus. Ultrasound showed a very inflamed gall bladder and a dense mass in his abdomen.

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The end of the Second World War promised an optimistic, new “1946 outlook” for Hong Kong. What role did Hong Kong police play? Did officers become more responsive to the people or more than ever an “arm of government”? What about the flow of refugees in the 1950s? How did police respond to the rise of triads and corruption? On February 10, Professor Carol A.G. Jones from the University of Wolverhampton will tell how powerful post-1945 social and political factors shaped Hong Kong’s police force and the legacy for modern policing. Her speech begins at 4 p.m. in Room 1118 of the K.K. Leung Building at the University of Hong Kong.

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