How to turn a friend into an enemy

Last summer the famous NGO-publication China Development Brief was ordered to close in what seemed at the time a limited crackdown on non-governmental organizations in China. Nick Young, founder and driving force behind the publication tells now the full story in CSMonitor (h/t China Digital Times): how he got the offer to become a government propagandist, or an official enemy.

Song said he could provide funds to expand our publishing and make it "famous" while helping the world to understand China better. In return, I would have to report directly to him. But, he warned, I should never tell anyone of this conversation, not even my wife. And if I rejected the deal I would be permanently barred. Pledging obedience to a threatening stranger was not an attractive idea, but I asked for time to think about it.

The deal lead nowhere, Young's visa was cancelled and he was sent back to Europe after he tried to enter China. Young:

In any case, the decision to bar me is a grim reflection on China's concept of security. I have consistently argued that China has a right to develop and that the West has a duty to help it find a sustainable path in a global environment already seriously hurt by Western development. To construe this as enmity, or to believe that a better relationship could be achieved by bribery and bullying, is not only absurd but also deeply worrying.

Update: More on the crackdown of what some of China's enforcement agencies perceive as political dissent (no easier way to describe this) by the Dui Hua Foundation.

Based on data from the 2007 China Law Yearbook, Chinese courts received 344 cases involving charges of "endangering state security" (ESS) in 2006, compared with 288 cases received in 2005. This is the highest number of ESS cases brought before Chinese courts since the category was introduced into the country's criminal law in 1997. Chinese courts concluded a total of 310 ESS trials in 2006, up from 299 in 2005.

As the Dui Hua Foundation concludes: no reason to suggest that the human right situation is actually improving in the run up to the Olympics.