Woman: China police ask to ax White House petition

BEIJING (AP) — Upset about plans for a petrochemical plant near her hometown in China, a woman turned to a new method that Chinese are using to air their complaints: she posted a petition on the White House's website. Then, Chinese police asked her to remove it.

Last week's run-in with internal security agents turned into an unexpected lesson for the woman.

"I didn't think (the petition) was a big deal and didn't foresee the ensuing events," said the woman, who asked to be identified only by the initials she used on the petition, B.Y., for fear of further angering the police.

B.Y., who is in her late 20s and works in the finance industry in the central city of Chengdu, said the officers asked her last Friday to delete the petition from the White House open petition site.

Set up in 2011, the "We the People" site allows the public to directly petition the White House. But she said she discovered the site does not allow people to remove petitions so she was unable to comply.

The Chengdu police department declined comment and would not provide the unlisted number for its domestic security protection branch.

B.Y.'s petition problem, which was first reported by Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper, shows how prickly Chinese authorities are about Internet dissent, probably particularly when it involves the White House.

Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, has been on edge over plans to build a petrochemical plant 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of the city. The plant is expected to produce 10 million tons of oil and 800,000 tons of ethylene per year. Residents are concerned that the plant, operated by state-owned PetroChina, will aggravate air and water pollution, and question its safety because it is near a seismic fault where two deadly earthquakes have occurred in the past five years.

Authorities thwarted a planned demonstration over the plant on May 4 by filling the streets with police for a supposed earthquake drill, and have censored discussions of protest on the Internet.

Internet sites, particularly social media, are China's most unfettered forums for discussion, and many, especially younger Chinese, chafe at increasingly intrusive censorship.

At about the same time, Chinese discovered that the White House petition site was beyond the censors' reach. Discussions about an unsolved case involving the poisoning of a university student named Zhu Ling in Beijing 18 years ago were being deleted from Chinese sites, so someone turned to the White House site. In a few days, a petition calling for an investigation of a suspect living in the U.S. gathered 100,000 online signatures — the threshold for an official White House response — and kept the discussion alive in China.

B.Y. said she went to the White House site to sign the petition for Zhu Ling. Then, she saw she could start her own petition as well.

"So, I wrote about Chengdu," B.Y. said in an interview conducted by instant message. Her petition, posted in English on May 7, notes public concern about the project and urges the international community to evaluate the plan and monitor its environmental impact.

The next day, she received a call from the domestic security personnel. "I got a shock today," she wrote on her Sina Weibo microblog. Two days later, she met with the officers at a police station near her workplace.

"I will be out to have some tea," she wrote Friday. "If I should not return in two hours, please report me as missing." Having tea usually means someone has been called by the domestic security personnel for a talk.

"It was merely a chat," B.Y. said in the interview. "They wanted to know what the opposing views were and if there were other issues the public are worried about."

Asked whether the White House had provided any information to Chinese authorities to help them identify the petition writer, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said it does not disclose users' information to any outside person or organization.

Unable to remove the White House petition, B.Y. attempted to comply with the police request by deleting a Sina Weibo post that had called attention to the petition. But she is also continuing to post Chengdu pollution levels on her microblog.

Quoting a well-known Chinese author, Hao Qun, who goes by the pen name Murong Xuecun and whose own microblog was recently censored, B.Y. said, "I am going to stay here until the stone blossoms."

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Music for Hearts in Yunnan Province, China

LOS ANGELES, April 27, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- What does a child prodigy do a few years after all the hoopla has died down? Marc Yu's answer is, "You know about fame, hard work, and the business dimension. But this is all mixed up with idealism because of your age and because of the nature of music. Or, at least, that's how it worked out for me." Marc, now 14, attends school and continues his musical studies while continuing his commitment to making the world a better place. He started humanitarian activities during his child prodigy days by doing charity fundraisers. While he can reminisce about being on the front page of the LA Times when he was six, or playing for Ellen, Leno and Oprah, and giving concerts for the BBC Proms, he also remembers being able to move people to unselfishly open their wallets for good causes. "Without this, music loses something special – people pay money so musicians can play music so people can pay money... Music becomes another business on a planet full of businesses, and here we are today: in trouble." To Marc, music should explode this cycle, as in the 60's when rock bands led a generation to stop the Vietnam War. "It is not hard to find good causes if you steer clear of the Trending Now! and the stream of advertising."

This summer Marc will merge his idealism with that of Dr. Robert Detrano (UC Irvine) and China California Heart Watch (China Cal), a non-profit providing free heart care to the rural people of Yunnan, China's second poorest province. Fund-raising is essential for providing grants to children born with heart problems that would be fatal if left untreated. Marc will be joining one of several intern teams that travel to remote towns and villages where they listen to children's hearts to detect the rhythmic swish-swishes that doctors call heart murmurs. Aside from cardiologist-supervised heart screenings of schoolchildren, interns also help record medical histories, measure heart rate and blood pressure, and assist in ultrasound examinations. China Cal's work has resulted in over 100 children born with congenital heart defects obtaining life-saving surgery, hundreds of villagers receiving treatment for high blood pressure and heart disease, and over 2000 village doctors being trained in the detection and treatment of heart disease and hypertension. China Cal's interns are college or medical students drawn by the opportunity to work hands-on with the medically-underserved of rural China, and gain awareness of the problems of healthcare there (described on their website www.chinacal.org).

When he returns to the US, Marc will be doing fewer ultrasounds and more fundraisers, with several concerts planned to raise awareness and funds. Marc knows music will lend drama, urgency, and brotherhood to the cause of fixing congenitally broken hearts.

Contacts:
Chloe Hui +1 (626) 373-7686 chloehui1211@gmail.com 
Amy Wright +86 13759486471 amy@chinacal.org 
Dr. Robert Detrano +86 13708768044 robert@chinacal.org

SOURCE China California Heart Watch (China Cal)

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US opposes coercive China action in island dispute

TOKYO (AP) — The United States says it's committed to defending Japan and opposes any coercive action by China to seize territory under Japanese control in the East China Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says the U.S. isn't taking a position in the dispute over the islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

Japan and China have sparred over the uninhabited islands in recent years.

Kerry's strong words of support Sunday for America's ally come just a day after he promised new levels of U.S.-Chinese cooperation on a host of problems, most notably North Korea's nuclear program.

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Two congressmen urge USTR designate China for trade secret theft

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two senior Democrats in the House of Representatives on Thursday urged the Obama administration to formally target China for the theft of U.S. trade secrets, a move they said could lead to duties on Chinese goods if U.S. concerns are not addressed.

"As evidence mounts that the Government of China actively engages in the cyber theft of the trade secrets of American businesses, we write to request that you consider designating China as a Priority Foreign Country under Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974," the lawmakers said.

The letter from Representatives Sander Levin and Charles Rangel urged the Trade Representative's office to take the action when it issues the annual report on intellectual property protection on April 30.

Their recommendation is the latest sign of congressional frustration with alleged widespread theft of U.S. company trade secrets by competitors in China through both cyber attacks and more conventional means of economic espionage.

"It looks very much as though the Chinese government is stealing our companies' trade secrets and passing them along to their SOEs (state-owned enterprises), and possibly other Chinese companies," Levin and Rangel, the top two Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a letter to acting Trade Representative Demetrios Marantis.

"It is difficult enough for our companies to compete with the endless massive subsidies and other industrial policies of the Chinese government, but add trade secret theft into the mix and it is miraculous that our companies are able to compete at all," they added.

The White House last month rolled out a new strategy to tackle to trade-secret theft included greater use of existing U.S. trade tools, like the U.S. Trade Representative's annual report on countries with the worst records of protecting U.S. intellectual property rights.

USTR rarely designates any "priority foreign country" in that report. The category is reserved for those nations with the most onerous and egregious acts, policies or practices that threaten U.S. intellectual property and which have the greatest adverse impact on the United States.

Under the statute, USTR generally must initiate what is known as a "Special 301" investigation within 30 days of designating a priority foreign country, which could lead to the White House imposing import duties if U.S. concerns are not satisfactorily addressed, the lawmakers said.

"We have received the letter and are reviewing it," USTR spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said.

USTR also could file a case at the World Trade Organization if it determines that the priority foreign country is violating international trade rules.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Vicki Allen)

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