WHEN THE TEACHER BRINGS THE APPLES:

Hong Kong Democracy Advocates Visit China (KEITH BRADSHER, 9/25/05, NY Times)

Hong Kong’s chief executive led all but one member of the city’s legislature across the border to mainland China today, starting a two-day trip that marks the first time Beijing authorities have let in prominent Hong Kong advocates of democracy since the Tiananmen Square killings on July 4, 1989.

The trip marks the latest in a series of steps by the Chinese government to tamp down calls for greater democracy here. Democracy advocates have long criticized Beijing, but agreed to the trip today and Monday without conditions. [...]

Leung Kwok-hung, a lawmaker and longtime leftist radical better known in English and Chinese as Long Hair because his hair hangs down to the middle of his back, brought along a large, bright purple gift basket lined with aluminum foil inside and holding five red apples. The apples were to symbolize the exclusion from the trip of journalists from Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper here whose journalists have been banned from the mainland for years.

In an interview here just before boarding the bus, Mr. Leung said that he also planned to hand Zhang Dejiang, the powerful Communist Party secretary of Guangdong province, a letter addressed to Vice President Zeng Qinghong of China. The letter would call for China to come clean about what happened in Tiananmen Square and would ask that China stop interfering in Hong Kong politics, Mr. Leung said.

[The Associated Press reported Sunday evening from Guangzhou that security officers led Mr. Leung away from a meeting room just before the lawmakers were to meet Mr. Zhang. Mr. Leung looked stern, and neither he nor the security officers said why he was being led away, The A.P. said.]

Nervous about possible pro-democracy protests by some lawmakers during the trip, Chinese authorities tightly limited news media coverage. Hong Kong officials disclosed on Friday that only a handful of television camera operators and photographers would be to enter most of the sightseeing locations visited by the lawmakers, and no reporters, who would have listen to soundtracks recorded by the camera operators.

First Li Ao; now Long Hair; it's time for George Bush to go there and Reagan them.

MORE:
Taiwan author gets a bit too free with his speeches (Robert Marquand, 9/26/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

A leading writer and political maverick from Taipei who ardently supports the unification of China and Taiwan - is confounding authorities in a rampaging lecture tour that ends Monday, by doing something no one here ever does: criticize the Communist Party in public.

In truth, Li Ao, a TV personality, leftist, and prolific author who was born in northern China, attacked the US, Japan, and nearly everything but the moon in rambling speeches that have embarrassed official China.

Mr. Li's broadsides chided the Party for a lack of intellectual freedom in China, told how the early Party allowed feisty debates, and included quotes from Mao about the Party one day ending - all broadcast live on Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, which reaches millions on the mainland.

Such events here are rare.

More broadly, experts say, the improbable Li event underscores how frigid the political climate in China has become.

As the government of Hu Jintao continues to consolidate its power in preparation for a key Party plenum next month, there is little room for the type of debate Li advocates.

If the negative official response is an indicator, Li's speeches were also a surprise.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 25, 2005 10:33 AM