Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
BEIJING – According to the newspaper, hackers stole the passwords of reporters and other employees in an effort to break into their email accounts. Security experts say there is little doubt the cyber-attack came from China. NBC’s Ian Williams reports.
Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
Actor Richard Gere, right, puts an arm around Chen Guangcheng after the Chinese dissident was awarded the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize in Washington on Tuesday. Next to Chen is his wife, Yuan Weijing, and adjacent to her is Lantos' widow, Annette Lantos.
BEIJING — Blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng urged the United States to not put business interests ahead of Beijing's human rights abuses and to help end the Communist Party's "rule of thieves" at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.
"It is clearly difficult to shift attention away from issues of finance and the economy," Chen told the award ceremony's attendees in translated remarks read out in English by actor and noted Tibet advocate Richard Gere. "[But] remember that placing undue value on material life will cause a deficit in spiritual life."
The 41-year-old self-taught lawyer also urged the United States to hold fast to its founding principles such as democracy, human rights and freedom of speech when dealing with China.
Chen's words could well be making some American officials squirm. As the Chinese and U.S. economies become more interdependent, Beijing has applied pressure for the two countries to put aside human rights issues and focus on mutual business interests.
China is the United States' second-largest trading partner behind Canada, and growth has it poised to move into the top spot. Goods and services trade between the countries totaled $539 billion in 2011, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Chen is best known for his daring nighttime escape from 19 months of house detention in his native Shandong province in April. Despite breaking his leg during his dash for freedom, he managed to travel some 300 miles to Beijing, where he sought refuge at the U.S. Embassy.
His escape to U.S. custody sparked a diplomatic maelstrom that eventually led to his negotiated release from the embassy to a Beijing hospital. Chen and his family were later granted permission to travel to New York University, where he could continue his legal studies out of the Chinese media spotlight.
Blind social activist Chen Guangcheng is starting a new life of freedom in the U.S. NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.
Acquaintances 'have been threatened'
Chen accepted the Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize, named after the only Holocaust survivor to have served in the U.S. Congress. Lantos' background had a "profound resonance" in his heart as he remembered his experience, that of his relatives in China and that of other human rights advocates still in detention, Chen said.
"Recently, many friends and neighbors who I have been in touch with by phone have been taken into custody by the authorities for questioning," Chen said. "They have been threatened and made to describe what our conversations have been about."
Chen's nephew Chen Kegui was sentenced last month to three years in prison after he was found guilty of assaulting local officials with a knife. The family says that officials barged into Chen Kegui's home and that he had been acting in self-defense.
In sheltering Chen and helping to negotiate his exit to New York, the U.S. government outraged Beijing, which roundly rejects foreign involvement in its domestic affairs.
Chen's frequent speeches and interviews in the United States regularly make news among China watchers and human rights advocates, but in China his words are blocked and censored.
On China's popular Twitter-like service, Weibo, Chen's name has long been blocked and mention of his award Tuesday generated no comments.
Beijing is likely to have bristled at Chen receiving an American peace prize. State media gave no attention to his award and the Foreign Ministry did not issue a statement on it.
North Korea vowed to boost its nuclear capabilities on Wednesday after the United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution condemning its controversial rocket launch last December.
“The present situation clearly proves that (North Korea) should counter the U.S. hostile policy with strength, not with words,” the country’s foreign ministry warned in a statement.
North Korea pledged in the statement to bolster its military capabilities and to build up what it called a “nuclear deterrence."
It also defended its “independent and legitimate right” to launch satellites and condemned the U.N. resolution as a “wanton violation of the inviolable sovereignty of (North Korea).”
The U.N. resolution passed on Tuesday called on North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and cease rocket launches, and came a month after the country, officially known as Democratic People's Republic of Korea, successfully conducted a rocket launch that put a satellite into orbit.
Pyongyang maintains that the test was purely “for peaceful purposes.”
U.S. officials disagree, saying the test was the latest attempt to develop multistage ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Washington hopes the newest U.N. resolution will help bind world opinion against North Korea’s opaque nuclear program.
"This resolution demonstrates to North Korea that there are unanimous and significant consequences for its flagrant violation of its obligations under previous resolutions," American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told reporters after the vote.
China’s unusual support for the resolution, the first in four years to expand sanctions against North Korea, suggests Beijing’s patience with its troublesome neighbor may be fraying.
But in comments made after the vote, Li Baodong, China's ambassador to the U.N., warned sanctions alone would not resolve the impasse.
“The policy of the sanction does not work,” he said. “The resolution must be accompanied, supplemented by diplomatic efforts.”
The new sanctions were categorized under the scope of existing ones, which were expanded to include North Korean government agencies -- most notably the North Korean Space Agency -- and companies.
In addition, a list of nuclear and ballistic missile technology banned for export to North Korea has been updated.
Despite the resolution and international concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program, leading North Korea expert Wang Junsheng said it was unlikely that Pyongyang would conduct a nuclear test anytime soon.
“(North Korea) uses nuclear tests to negotiate with foreign countries but mainly to establish the Kim family's stature within the country,” he said, referring to the country’s ruling family.
“By successfully launching the satellite last month, there is no need for Kim Jong Un to conduct a nuclear test at this time,” he said.
Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s supreme leader, is the son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of Kim Il Sung, who founded the communist state.
NBC News' Li Le contributed to this report.
Related:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offers olive branch to South in rare address
China Daily via Reuters
Wang Xianxiang carries two buckets of water with his eyelids during a provincial festival for migrant workers in Shaodong County, Hunan province, Saturday.
BEIJING – Wang Xianxiang’s talent is an eyeful.
The 42-year-old fireworks maker from the central Chinese province of Hunan was photographed last weekend performing his signature trick: Suspending two water buckets with a combined weight of 9 pounds on plastic hangers hooked to his eyelids for a minute.
China Daily via Reuters
Wang says he is hoping to increase the amount of weight he can carry with his eyelids.
Wang entertained local migrant workers at a provincial festival near his hometown of Liuyang Saturday.
“When I first started it was extremely painful,” Wang told NBC News about his unique talent, “but after a lot of practice it’s just uncomfortable today.”
Among other talents he’s developed for the show? Having two men wrap a metal wire tightly around his neck while he talks to the audience, which he says has been in the thousands.
Wang, who is married with two children, said he has been doing his eyelid trick for five to six years and started doing it purely out of boredom.
But as he increased the weight on his eyelids, he started to train – practicing for 30 minutes each morning and two hours at night.
Wang’s family initially frowned upon his hobby, but slowly came around as his stature grew within the community.
When asked what his aspirations for the future were, Wang kept it simple. “I can currently hold 4.5 pounds on each eyelid, I’d like to push that to 11 pounds per eyelid.”
He was optimistic that he could accomplish that eye-popping feat by the end of the year.
NBC News’ Le Li contributed to this report.
BEIJING — The rise of new Chinese leader Xi Jinping last November has not been good for mainland officials caught with their pants down.
In recent months, a slew of low-level Communist officials as well as a few high ranking ones —most notably the vice party chief of the southwestern province of Sichuan, Li Chuncheng — have been exposed by local media and dismissed from their positions after their sexual peccadilloes came to light.
The latest senior official to be toppled due to a sex scandal, Yi Junqing, was a vice minister in charge of China Central Committee’s Central Compilation and Translation Bureau.
His dismissal was announced Thursday in a one-sentence statement by Chinese state media, which simply noted he had been "removed from post for 'improper lifestyle.'"
The terse release by the state-run Xinhua news service belied the expansive and often lurid claims that have flooded the Web about Yi’s sexual trysts. Yi was seemingly exposed by his alleged mistress, Chang Yan, who posted a 120,000 Chinese character essay online detailing the sex, money and gifts exchanged over many months.
Though many of the affair’s particulars read like the cliché-ridden narratives familiar to many Chinese who have followed the adventures of officials over the years, this case is unique in that it shows the lengths to which many in China go to secure coveted ministry jobs, and the economic and social security that comes with those jobs.
Chang, 35, a married native of China’s Shanxi province, was a visiting post-doctorate student at the Translation Bureau and had aspirations of landing a job there once her studies were completed.
Earning employment at the bureau’s Beijing office — and thus the proper permits needed to bring her husband from Shanxi to live and work in Beijing —would require the authorization of Yi, who ran the bureau.
According to Chang’s account, the price for that approval turned out to be steep, both morally and financially.
"I was trying to figure out what he wants, money or me," Chang wrote in one excerpt translated by the U.K.’s Telegraph newspaper. "There is no free lunch if I wanted to work for the bureau. I knew there was a price to pay to work for the bureau. I had already paid 10,000 yuan [USD$1,600]. He said he would take two months to get me the job and then he would invite me."
Besides giving in and becoming Yi’s mistress, Chang writes that she paid $10,000 in total to Yi to secure this government position. Yi’s failure to deliver on that job led Chang to post details of the sordid affair on her private blog, she said.
That someone would sleep with a potential boss or even pay for a position is of no surprise in China, but to have it written about so openly sparked an uproar online.
Despite censors erasing the story on Chinese websites, news of the essay soon spread on the Web.
On China’s Twitter-like service, Weibo, the affair became a hot topic Friday.
A post by Chang on her blog — where the original entry was quickly erased — seemed to suggest that the story had been written as a piece of fiction.
"In my spare time I put together a work of fiction," Chang wrote on her blog entry. "I suffered serious depression... and regularly sank into a state of delusion and even fantasy."
Weibo users overwhelmingly dismissed the confession as forced and condemned Yi for his corruption.
"Rumor has again proven to be truth," wrote one user.
"If we got rid of officials like Yi who had these types of affairs, we’d have to eliminate 99.9 percent of them!" declared another.
Regardless of whether her story is true or not, Yi’s dismissal Thursday shows the lengths to which China’s ruling Communist Party appears willing to go in order to maintain its legitimacy and supremacy.
More news from China from NBC News' Behind the Wall
NBC News' Le Li contributed to this report.
Alexander F. Yuan/AP
Parents play with their children at a kid's play area in a shopping mall in Beijing on Jan. 10.
BEIJING — China has quelled speculation its controversial "one-child" policy is to be scrapped, instead announcing Wednesday that family planning laws to curb the birth rate will remain.
"The policy should be a long-term one and its primary goal is to keep a low birthrate," Wang Xia, minister in charge of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, said.
The pronouncement comes after months of speculation that the decades-old restriction would be abandoned.
In October, a Chinese government think tank urged the policy be relaxed to allow two children for every family in the country by 2015.
"I’m surprised," said Professor Shaun Breslin, associate fellow at U.K. think tank, Chatham House. "Almost everything we had heard in recent months pointed towards a relaxation of one-child."
The 1979 law prohibits about one-third of China’s 1.3 billion citizens from having a second child. The policy is officially backed up by fines, but campaigners say more than one million forced abortions are carried out every year.
It has slowed the spectacular growth of the country’s population, preventing an estimated 400 million births over three decades.
In a related statement on Wednesday, the family planning commission said China’s current low birthrate "is not stable because, with the exception of some developed cities, the fertility level in most of China's regions will rise if the basic state policy of family planning is abolished."
"Therefore it is necessary to stick to the basic state policy of family planning to stabilize the current low fertility level," it added.
Breslin said China’s looming demographic crisis — a huge elderly population supported by a relatively tiny younger generation — highlighted social problems such as the need for greater universal healthcare.
"For most Chinese people the current system works fine if you have a sore throat, but a knee operation could use up all your savings," he said. "That means many are keen to ensure they have a male child in order to ensure there is enough income in the family."
He added that Wednesday’s announcement did not mean China’s new leadership was eschewing economic or social reforms. "It can take a year or two for any new leadership in China to introduce change," he said.
Professor Hu Xingdou, of the Beijing Institute of Technology, told the South China Morning Post it would be difficult for the government to abolish the one-child policy overnight.
"China still needs a family-planning policy due to our vast population and lack of cropland, as well as the relative deficiency of per capita resources,” he said.
The one-child rule is mainly enforced in urban areas.
Wang also announced an expansion of rural healthcare provision for pregnant women, and said efforts "should also be made to rectify the imbalance in gender ratio."
She also said a "complete working system" would be established to "in light of the great numbers of young migrant workers flocking to the cities for jobs."
Related stories:
Chinese say one child is enough as Beijing weighs end of policy
Growing calls in China to change the one-child policy
Not Chinese enough in China? Americans' dilemma
According to the newspaper China Daily, pollution levels have gotten so bad they're creating respiratory problems, prompting residents to seek air purifiers and face masks. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
BEIJING -- If you have been following China’s state-controlled news media you could be forgiven for thinking that clear blue skies -- not oppressive and choking smog -- have been the rule this winter.
But, finally, they seem to have noticed there is a problem.
Days after huge smog clouds settled on some of China’s most important cities, The People's Daily ran two articles on the pollution crisis Monday.
And while one headline declared that “Beautiful China begins to breathe healthily,” the article itself detailed the extent of the problems.
Experts and environmentalists describe the impact that air pollution has in China, which burns half of the world's coal.
China Central Television News Channel also covered the issue extensively over the weekend.
Visibly high levels of air pollution were probably behind the admissions that the smog -- dubbed “fog” by many -- had reached dangerous levels.
On Monday, air pollution reached "critical levels" in 67 of China's cities, CCTV reported.
State-run media has even begun citing statistics from international environmental group Greenpeace that indicate that more than 2,500 people probably died prematurely in Beijing in 2012 because of air pollution.
Thousands of deaths estimated
Greenpeace estimated that in 2012, more than 8,000 people suffered premature death in four major cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian.
Wang Zhao/AFP-Getty Images
Two people wearing face masks make their way along a street in Beijing Tuesday.
Patients in Beijing hospital’s respiratory and pediatric departments increased significantly recently, The Beijing Evening News reported.
About 30 percent of the more than 9,000 patients treated every day at Beijing Children’s Hospital in the week that ended Sunday were suffering from respiratory problems, the newspaper added. The hospital declined NBC’s interview request.
Despite the bad news, some environmentalists were celebrating over the weekend.
“I’m kind of telling myself it’s great that the air pollution reached this level so that the people and the government can finally pay attention,” Li Bo, a board member of non-profit group Friends of Nature, said.
Beijing's bureau of environmental protection held a rare press conference Monday to explain the severity of the pollution problem, and outline an emergency plan to reduce the levels of harmful air particles.
The government’s recent attention to the issue comes after decades of prioritizing economic development over environmental conservation, critics say.
'How come we survive?'
On the streets, many seemed unconcerned.
Ma Xin, a 22-year-old street vendor who sells leather coats, said he did not believe Beijing’s air was all that harmful.
“If Beijing’s air is as bad as you say, how come we survive?” he said, dismissing data about air quality.
And Gong Jingyan, who has a masters degree from a top-tier Chinese university and works at one of most prestigious banks in China, said while she realized the “air is harmful,” she did not like wearing a mask because “they look ugly.”
Gong takes a different approach in an attempt to combat air pollution. “I drink water boiled with pear to help my lungs stay clean,” she said.
Huang Xue, a manager at a public relations firm, also expressed concern, but said there was little that could be done.
“We never had this concept of protecting ourselves from air,” she said. “The only thing I could think of doing was to stay indoors.”
“I am not convinced a mask can do a lot,” she added. “Besides, my 18-month-old son will never keep a mask on.”
However, there is at least one way to cope: Leave town.
As soon as Beijing resident Gao Lin, a part-time lawyer and a mother of two, saw Saturday’s record-breaking pollution levels, she bought tickets to Sanya, a resort island in the South China Sea.
“We are leaving tomorrow,” Gao said. “The only way you can escape from bad air is to leave Beijing.”
NBC News’ Yanzhou Liu contributed to this report
Related stories:
Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off life span
Video: Is this the worst pollution in the world?
Chinese pollution protesters clash with police
In Beijing, the smog is hazardous. ITV's Angus Walker reports.
BEIJING — Air quality in Beijing was the "worst on record" on Saturday and Sunday, according to environmentalists, with pollution 30-45 times above the recommended safety levels.
With a thick smog wrapping the Chinese capital since Friday, the city's pollution monitoring center warned the city's 20 million residents to stay indoors.
Data posted on Sunday by the monitoring center showed particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) had reached more than 600 micrograms per square metre at some monitoring stations in Beijing, and was as high as 900 on Saturday evening.
The recommended daily level for PM2.5 is 20, according to the World Health Organisation. Such pollution has been identified as a major cause of asthma and respiratory diseases.
"This is really the worst on record not only from the official data but also from the monitoring data from the U.S. embassy — some areas in (neighboring) Hebei province are even worst than Beijing," said Zhou Rong, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace.
The Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center said heavy pollution had been trapped by an area of low pressure, making it harder to disperse, and the conditions were likely to last another two days.
Related: Beijing's pollution could cut 5 years off life span
Pollution has been identified as one of the biggest challenges facing China's leaders, with outgoing president Hu Jintao saying during his address to the Communist Party Congress last November that the country needed to "reverse the trend of ecological deterioration and build a beautiful China."
China said at the end of last year that it would begin releasing hourly pollution data for its biggest cities.
Beijing has already committed to a timetable to improve air quality in the city, and has relocated most of its heavy industry, but surrounding regions have not made the same commitments, said Zhou.
"For Beijing, cleaning up will take a whole generation but other regions don't even have any targets to cut coal burning. I bet the pollution here is mainly from those surrounding regions."
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Kyodo News via AP
A protester holds aloft a banner calling for freedom of speech near the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province on Monday.
GUANGZHOU, China — Scores of supporters of one of China's most liberal newspapers demonstrated outside its headquarters on Monday in a rare protest against censorship, backing an unusual strike by journalists against interference by the provincial propaganda chief.
The protest in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, came amid an escalating standoff between the government and the people over press freedom. It is also an early test of Communist Party Chief Xi Jinping's commitment to reform.
Police allowed the demonstration outside the headquarters of the Southern Group, illustrating that the Guangdong government, led by new appointee and rising political star Hu Chunhua, wants to tread carefully to contain rising public anger over censorship.
The protesters, most of them young, laid down small handwritten signs that said "freedom of expression is not a crime" and "Chinese people want freedom."
China Nobel winner Mo Yan likens censorship to airport security
Many clutched yellow chrysanthemums, symbolizing mourning the death of press freedom.
"The Nanfang (Southern) Media Group is relatively willing to speak the truth in China, so we need to stand up for its courage and support it now," Ao Jiayang, a young NGO worker with bright orange dyed hair, told Reuters.
AP
Security guards stand near protest banners as flowers are laid outside the headquarters of Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong on Monday.
"We hope that through this we can fight for media freedom in China," Ao said. "Today's turnout reflects that more and more people in China have a civic consciousness."
The U.S. State Department on Monday weighed in on the popular agitation for freer speech in China.
"We believe that censorship of the media is incompatible with China’s aspirations to build a modern information-based economy and society," said spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, speaking to reporters at the daily department briefing. "It is, of course, interesting that we now have Chinese who are strongly taking up their right for free speech, and we hope the government’s taking notice."
Could expand
Chen Ziming, a Beijing-based political analyst who spent years in prison for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement, said the protests could get worse if authorities ignore the protesters demands.
"I am concerned … that the leaders concerned may not have the boldness and the capability to push for more reform," he told NBC News. "If the problem is not handled properly, there is the danger that it will expand and worsen."
The non-profit watchdog group Reporters without Borders ranked China at 174th out of 179 spots in its 2011-2012 press freedom index. The United States ranked 47th in the annual report, six rungs above Hong Kong, a former British colony which is administered separately from China's mainland.
"China, which has more journalists, bloggers and cyber-dissidents in prison than any other country, stepped up its censorship and propaganda in 2011 and tightened its control of the Internet, particularly the blogosphere," the group said in a report about the rankings.
The attention paid to the protest domestically highlights the unique position of Guangdong, China's wealthiest and most liberal province and the birthplace of the country's "reform and opening up" program. In a symbolic move, Xi chose to go to Guangdong on his first trip after being anointed party chief in November.
Mo Yan's Nobel win celebrated —and panned — in China
"That this is happening in Guangdong, a trendsetter of China’s reform, is cause for worry," Bao Tong, the highest ranking party official sent to prison for sympathizing with the 1989 pro-democracy movement, told NBC News.
"If Guangdong regresses, then it will be a setback for the reform pioneered by Xi Zhongxun," he said, referring to the father of new Party chief Xi Jinping who was once Guangdong’s governor.
Revelations of vast fortune held by Chinese leader's family may hurt Communist Party image
Talking to NBC News by telephone from his Beijing home where he remains under virtual house arrest, Bao said China’s new leaders recently called for protecting the constitution and rule of law.
"What the journalists did was to support the call of the new leaders, and the leaders should be happy, not unhappy," he said.
Several open letters have circulated on the Internet calling for the Guangdong propaganda chief, Tuo Zhen, to step down, blaming him for muzzling the press.
Photographs on microblogs showed banners that said "if the toxin of Tuo isn't removed ... Guangdong will be castrated."
"Not since the time of reform and opening up and the founding of China has there been someone like Tuo Zhen," Yan Lieshan, a retired veteran editor at the Southern Weekly newspaper, told Reuters by telephone. "He's too arrogant. He has gone overboard and constantly violates regulations."
Xiao Shu, a former prominent commentator at the Southern Weekly, said Tuo required that journalists submit topics for him to approve and that he yanked issues that he disliked.
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei goes 'Gangnam Style'
"These details illustrate one problem: that he has established within the Guangdong media a system of prior censorship of the press," Xiao said, calling for Tuo's removal.
Chinese Internet users already cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights and elite politics, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.
China shut the website of a leading pro-reform magazine on Friday, apparently because it ran an article calling for political reform and constitutional government, sensitive topics for the party which brooks no dissent.
NBC News' Eric Baculinao, Le Li, Kari Huus and Reuters contributed to this report.
More world stories from NBC News:
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook
E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS