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A Chinese woman was granted immigrant status in Canada after "it was argued she'd face huge fines and stigmatization if deported to China," the London Free Press reported.  The woman, Hong Zhang, is a single mother who fled China while pregnant.

According to Hong's consultant, "deported single mothers face a fine of about $140,000 a child when they return to China with kids."

China's draconian set of family planning policies restrict most Chinese couples to having only one child and couples must apply for a birth permit before starting a pregnancy.  After a woman has had her permitted number of children (usually one), she is required to undergo IUD insertion or be sterilized. Unauthorized pregnancies must be terminated, and after an unauthorized birth, one spouse must be sterilized. 

Canada's decision to grant Hong immigrant status will surely save her from imminent punishment and sends a clear signal that China's one-child policy is a direct threat to human rights.  For more on China's one-child policy, please click here.

From a Southern Weekly article translated by Danwei.org, a story emerged this week about Feng Chongyi, a noted Chinese academic, who is suing Chinese customs for confiscating books he was trying to bring into the mainland.  Feng argued that because there’s no clear public list of banned materials, Customs had no right to confiscate his property.  Lawsuits like this haven’t been successful in the past, but it does bring up an interesting question:  Is what He Qinglian calls the “Fog of Censorship” preferable to a definitive list of banned materials? 

Most people probably think that there‘s a clear line between what’s allowed and what’s not in China today, but in fact that’s not the case.  Censorship is all over the map, and inconsistently applied.  For example, a blog post mentioning Tiananmen Square may squeeze through the censors on one blogging platform, but be rejected from another on grounds that it’s “too sensitive.” (Read More)

This article from BBC News is so bizarre it is almost comical. A group of book salesmen were handing out pamphlets on a lecture at a primary school in Zhejiang Province. Somehow, a rumor spread that these men were actually a child trafficking gang trying to kidnap the students. Angry parents mobbed the five salesmen and beat them, according to reports from the local police. Eventually the police broke up the mob and sent the salesmen to a local hospital, but one of the men was beaten so severely he died soon afterwards. 

Assuming this report is true – and reports emerging from local police in China should always be taken with a grain of salt – it highlights several underlying human rights issues. The first issue is media censorship and the likelihood of rumors leading to violence in China (remember the Guangdong toy factory?). Rumors are common worldwide, but in China they are particularly dangerous for two reasons: one, due to media censorship, people trust rumors more than they trust what they see in the media; and two, because local officials, particularly police, are so often corrupt, upon hearing a rumor people in China are likely to turn to vigilante justice, rather than calling the police.

Three days ago in Jiangsu Province, Guo Quan, a former professor at Nanjing Normal University was formally sentenced to 10 years in prison after becoming a threat in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party when he posted his internet series "The Early Voice of Democracy".  Guo was charged with "subversion of state power", an accusation that is often used by the CCP to criminalize public expression of dissent.  The sentence was contested by Guo's lawyer who called it "indefensible from a legal perspective," and who also stated "...using peaceful and rational means to petition cannot be considered subversion of state power." 

Guo was a founder of the New Democracy Party in 2007, which he claimed had 40 million members, and called for a multi-party democracy in China, with more protection for workers under privatization of state-run businesses.  He was first arrested in November 2008, and his trial began in early August 2009. At one point during the trial his mother was heard leaving the courtroom shouting, "Son, you are great!  I am proud of you!"  His sentencing this week is hugely disappointing for people around the world interested in the state of human rights in China, and freedom of expression in particular, but Guo's pursuit of a true Chinese multi-party system in the face of such injustice is undoubtedly making his mama even prouder.