This Week at the China Support Network...

CSN to host RAZY press conference;
Obama praised for tariff on Chinese tires;
Friedman blasted for ignorance about China;
Chinese dissidents host art exhibit

September 13, 2009 (CSN)

CSN to host RAZY press conference

In responding to the Tienanmen Square crackdown, the China Support Network and the Chinese dissident community are rightly outraged by the capture, mistreatment, arrest, and upcoming trial for Zhou Yongjun, who in 1989 was the first Tienanmen Square student leader elected to chair the Autonomous Students Federation of Beijing Universities. The Federation was the occupying force in Tienanmen Square.

The Chinese government plans to hold a trial for Zhou, who lives in the United States where he has two U.S. citizen children, and who attempted a return to China in September, 2008. As he attempted to cross from Macao into Hong Kong with someone else's passport, Hong Kong immigration authorities decided that he should go to Mainland China in the custody of authorities. They transferred him to Mainland authorities who held him in Shenzhen before moving him to his home province of Sichuan and arresting him with trumped up charges.

There is absolutely no merit to the trumped up case against Zhou, and CSN has already described this case as Tienanmen Square persecution carried forward into the present day. On Friday, September 18, 2009, CSN will host a Manhattan press conference with Chinese legal experts to detail the case and to announce next steps which are being undertaken by RAZY. RAZY is an acronym for the ad-hoc Rescue Alliance for Zhou Yongjun.

The press conference will run from 12:00 to 2:00pm on Friday the 18th, at the National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003. Presenters will include attorney Li Jinjin, who is also well known from the Tienanmen Square student leadership; attorney Ning Ye; John Kusumi for the China Support Network; and Yuewei Zhang for the family members of Zhou Yongjun.

Obama praised for tariff on Chinese tires

The China Support Network extends its applause for the recent decision by U.S. President Barack Obama to raise import tariffs on Made-In-China vehicle tires. CSN's director emeritus, John Kusumi, said, "This is a first baby step towards closing the barn door and retrieving the U.S. economy from Communist China. However, it is very welcome news in that this step is in the right direction. Kudos must go to Barack Obama and to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

"We used to think that a currency manipulation tariff would be the first Obama tariff against economic dirty pool by the Chinese regime. It turns out that a tire tariff appeared first. We are happy to take progress where we can get it -- so today, the China Support Network offers a round of applause to President Obama."

The China Support Network also calls upon Beijing to abolish Laogai and Laojiao systems in China. Because those systems promote slave labor, they too are economic dirty pool and serve to unbalance trade, tilting the playing field. As internationally-recognized human rights abuses, Laogai and Laojiao could easily become the basis of future tariffs from an enlightened U.S. presidential administration.

Kusumi commented, "When they want the jobs back in America, Laogai and Laojiao are ready reasons for tariffs. They are low hanging fruit -- easy to criticize and easy to tariff, in the same spirit of social and economic justice as that of the Emancipation Proclamation." In line with that, rhetorical questions came from Kusumi: "Should labor be worth nothing? Or, should labor be worth something? And, how noxiously objectionable is this Chinese practice of employing slave labor?"

Friedman blasted for ignorance about China

The New York Times published an abomination on September 8, 2009 -- a rambling, incoherent, disjointed editorial from columnist Tom Friedman, which has been roundly criticized and lampooned on the internet.

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