But as Chinese waters are increasingly depleted of sea turtles, Chinese poachers are going further afield to find them. That includes hunting in waters that both China and the Philippines claim, like the waters around the Philippine island of Palawan.

The area is home to the endangered hawksbill sea turtle, a species so ancient it predates some dinosaurs. It can grow to be as large as one meter across, according to Glenda Cadigal, of the Palawan Council on Sustainable Development.

“It lays 1,000 eggs,” she said, “and when it lays the eggs in one area, all the hatchlings that hatch from that area will go back to the same spot to lay its eggs at the time it is mature.”

But fewer turtles are making the journey of late, she said. She estimates that their population around Palawan is down about 20 percent from a decade ago, because of poaching, mostly by Chinese.

Sea turtle entangled in net (Photo: NOAA/Wiki Commons)

Cadigal said that some Chinese boats caught near Palawan had tools onboard for stuffing turtles.

The Philippine navy, which patrols those waters, captured a Chinese boat of poachers in December. The boat had two big outboard motors, according to Giovanni Bacordo, deputy commander of the Philippine Armed Forces, Naval Forces West. He said it tried to ram the patrol boat, and then it fled.

“So we gave chase for about 19 minutes until their outboard motors bogged down,” Bacordo said. “While we were giving chase, they were throwing away some equipment overboard, and maybe some dead sea turtles, we don’t know. But the following day, we recovered a fishing net, weighing about a ton, and three more dead sea turtles. So all in all, we recovered nine dead sea turtles, and three live ones.”

Six Chinese were arrested. The alleged poachers said they came from China’s Hainan province, more than 600 miles away. There’s a thriving black market there in sea turtles — a single sea turtle can go for $3,000.

Chinese police in Hainan do periodically crack down on turtle poaching. Still, General Juancho Sabban, who heads the entire Philippine Armed Forces Western Command, suggests the Chinese poachers aren’t operating entirely on their own. He thinks they must have a mother ship, perhaps just commercial, and perhaps not. He said some Chinese poachers have befriended Palawan locals, and have even offered to buy sea turtles from them, which makes him suspicious, as a military man.

“By doing so, they are able to step on Philippine soil, befriending the populace, which to us in the military is a very common ploy in a more advanced planning. You have to immerse and know the local culture, as well as mingle with them and establishing a support base,” Sabban said.

So far, there’s no proven link between the poachers and the Chinese military. But other Chinese fishing boats have been known to lay down markers in contested waters near here.

As for the accused poachers, the six caught in December await trial. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has said China is watching, and wants the Philippines to treat them fairly. Glenda Cadigal of the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development said, if anything, Chinese poachers in the past have been treated too fairly. They’ve been allowed to post bail and leave — or the Chinese embassy posts bail for them.

“I’m not into the bailing, because the lives of these wildlife species – you just pay a certain amount, and then you’re free? For me, it’s not fair,” Cadigal said. “They don’t have their voices, and we should be the ones protecting them.”

There’s now a group in Hainan called “SeaTurtles 911,” which is trying to rescue captured sea turtles, and spread awareness in China that hunting endangered turtles is bad for the environment.

But demand lingers, and the supply near Palawan seems too tempting for poachers to resist – especially with the Chinese government insisting that these waters are China’s to exploit.

Accompanied by a 20 strong trade delegation, she is scheduled to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in the capital.

This is her fifth visit to China, a strategic economic partner for Germany.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. Much of Europe looks to Germany to help pay the bills, but many there dream that China will swoop in and solve the Eurozone’s debt crisis. Today, German chancellor Angela Merkel went to China to discuss Europe’s financial woes, and she’s apparently asking China to contribute to a bailout fund. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in Beijing. What is China’s response to this request, Mary Kay?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, today Angela Merkel met with Premier Wen Jiabao, and he did call the European debt crisis urgent, and said that China is considering more participation in helping to resolve it, possibly by contributing to the bailout fund for the euro. This is new. Up until now Chinese leaders have been saying you know, we’re very interested in Europe getting out of the debt crisis, it’s important to us. Europe as a whole is China’s biggest trading partner. And over the past year trade has fallen off because of the economic crisis. What seems to have changed is that the Chinese government has recognized that if it doesn’t step in this could drag on a lot longer than is comfortable for its economy.

Werman: So it’s kind of self protection. Is there anything else in it for China?

Magistad: Certainly good will, but in the past that hasn’t been high on China’s list for reasons why it would spend billions of dollars or invest billions of dollars somewhere else. There was a lot of push back back in the autumn when China was getting pressure, getting asked from Europe you know, could you help out? A lot of Chinese were saying online, why would you do that? You know, we need money for schools. We need money for better hospitals. We need money for all kinds of things here, why would you be putting China’s money elsewhere? And the government could come back and say you know, one way that we have money to spend on things like schools, and hospitals and so forth is we trade with other countries. And if those countries go down it’s gonna hurt us too.

Werman: Will that be enough to keep the Chinese people quiet?

Magistad: Hard to know. The Chinese people haven’t been very quiet lately. There are 500 million of them online now and they’re very vocal these days.

Werman: What does China make of suddenly being perceived as this white knight being able to come to the rescue of countries in Europe?

Magistad: I don’t think China sees itself as a white knight, and if anything, instead of throwing up its hands and saying “Whoa, that’s not our role; our role is to look for good places to put our money, good investments for us to make for our purposes; and we think you guys should get your house in order because it’s good for you and it’s good for us. But you know, if we invest in you it’s because we see benefit for ourselves. We’re not doing this out of charity.”

Werman: Has anybody in China discussed a worst case scenario in which a big global session happens and where China might find itself it that were the case?

Magistad: Well, I think going back to 2008, a lot of Chinese analysts were looking at worst case scenarios, and that was why there was a big infusion of cash from the government in stimulus spending. Now, the government feels that it actually has a bit of breathing room to be able to slow down you know, white hot economic growth, and think more about the quality of growth, recognizing that it can’t keep putting so much money into infrastructure and into real estate, which is what was driving growth. It needs to be thinking about ways of increasing domestic consumption, and that means fundamentally changing the structure if the economy, including having more of a social safety net for ordinary Chinese citizens.

Werman: Let me ask you this, Mary Kay, just to go back. Merkel also apparently asked China to use its influence with Iran on its nuclear program. How did that go over?

Magistad: Yeah, she said that she’d like to see China persuade Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. And Wen probably listened politely, but later told Chinese journalists that China objects to Western nations politicizing what he called the normal commercial relationship China has with Iran. What he was referring to is that China imports about 11% of its crude oil from Iran, that makes it China’s third biggest supplier of crude oil. And China opposes sanctions and really doesn’t want to get involved in that way. If anything, it’s gonna use its clout to try to make sure that there isn’t too much pressure on Iran.

Werman: The World’s Beijing correspondent, Mary Kay Magistad. Always good to speak, thanks.

Magistad: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Eighteen-year-old Sarah Osorio, bubbly and beautiful, is enjoying her reign this year as both Miss Palawan and Miss Kalayaan – the name of a contested chain of islands in the South China Sea. Osorio shows me a scene from the video of the beauty contest, where she’s wearing a red bikini.

She said she wasn’t so keen on showing so much skin. She joined the pageant to make a serious point — about the Kalayaan Islands.

“China’s claiming Kalayaan as its own,” she said. “The Philippines don’t have any capability to fight China. China is very big, compared to Philippines.”

Osorio grew up spending a month each summer on Kalayaan’s biggest island. It’s just a tenth of a square mile.

“We’re a small island — no activities, no entertainments,” she said. There’s no electricity so after 6 p.m. there’s nothing to do but sleep.

When I asked her why people choose to live there, she said: “To show that it’s ours, that we have that island for the Philippines.”

Osorio’s parents are among the 60 civilians who claim residence on Kalayaan’s main island, Pag-asu. The idea is just to have a presence – and Osorio’s family is doing its part. Her dad’s a local legislator. Her uncle lives there, too; he’s a fisherman. According to Osorio, he’s had problems with Chinese boats near the island.

“He told me Chinese people were around their area, fishing and fishing and fishing. If you talk to them, they harass you,” Osorio said. It’s mostly shouting matches, she said. But there’s been more physical contact than that, on the broader South China Sea.

Over the past year or so, China has become increasingly aggressive about asserting its claim to almost the entire South China Sea, and the oil and gas reserves its seabed may contain.

When ExxonMobil announced in October that it had found what looked like a sizable natural gas field near the Vietnamese city of Danang, China warned that foreign companies shouldn’t proceed in waters that China claims.

The Philippines has had its own challenges. General Juancho Sabban, who heads the Western Command of the Philippine Armed Force, shows off what he calls a “Chinese donation” to his marine patrol boats – a confiscated Chinese fishing boat.

“They had GPS, they had radios. They had air compressors, for deep sea diving,” which, he pointed out, you normally wouldn’t find on a fishing boat.

Sabban thinks this boat was doing surveillance. It tried to ram a smaller Philippine patrol boat, so, he said, the patrol had to shoot to disable the engine.

The Chinese who were arrested on the boat said they were just fishermen. But Sabban said they were bailed out by the Chinese embassy, and then they disappeared.

He said similar boats have left construction materials near islands the Philippines claims. Sabban has promptly cleared them, because when this happened on Mischief Reef in 1995, the Chinese erected a structure almost overnight, and now have a permanent presence there. It’s about 130 nautical miles from the Philippines and 600 from China.

According to the International Law of the Sea, a country’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends 200 miles from its shores. But China maintains it has a historical claim to islands even farther away, because it found them and named them first.

“In layman’s terms, it’s absurd, unbelievable,” General Sabban scoffs. He points out that the Philippines can also cite historical records of its fishermen who went to China. “So are we also legalized to claim South China Sea?” he asked.

Sabban sees China’s new assertiveness in the South China Sea as being less about protecting questionable historical claims than about the fact that the Philippines and Vietnam are both opening up waters they claim to foreign companies. Shell and Chevron are already active in the Philippines, and the country is soliciting bids for 15 more offshore exploration blocks.

“This year, there will be more drilling in the West Philippine Sea, and we expect that by the end of this year, more rigs will be in place,” Sabban said.

Protecting an oil rig will be one of the military exercises the Philippines does with the US military this spring. A Philippines delegation was just in Washington last week to talk about enhanced US military support in the South China Sea. Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations, spoke about US interests at the Center for a New American Security in Washington last month.

Spratly islands map showing occupied features marked with the flags of countries occupying them. (Graphic: US govt)

“This area is vital to the United States,” Greenert said. “It’s been an area vital to our navy and our focus for decades, because of our economy, our trade routes.”

Greenert said the challenge is to keep those trade routes open – and peaceful – while keeping belligerence to a minimum. “How do you have a conversation with someone who is insistent that you’re in the wrong place? You either stop talking, or you keep talking, and you watch how you ratchet up the rhetoric,” he said.

China’s view is that the United States should mind its own business and stay out of the South China Sea. In November, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said, “disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved through friendly consultation between directly involved sovereign states.” He added that any interference from outside forces would only “complicate matters.”

China would rather point out, one-on-one, to the Philippines that the $30 billion in trade it has with China could double in a couple of years – or China could punish it, as the Communist Party-owned newspaper The Global Times has suggested, for turning to the US for more military muscle to counter China’s claims. The Global Times has also remarked that these “little countries” in the region should stop challenging China’s interests, or they’ll ‘hear the roar of cannon fire.’

“The Chinese shouldn’t be telling us to get used to that,” responded General Sabban. “We have been hearing the sound of cannons for 40 years.”

General Sabban added, have they forgotten the Vietnam War? A small country can hold out against a superpower, when its core interests are at stake. It can hold out even better – when another superpower stands ready to come to its aid.

This sounds impressive from one angle, that just over 10% of Chinese lived in cities when the Communist Party came to power in 1949, and not quite 19% when economic reforms started in 1979. (By comparison, more than 50% of Americans lived in cities by 1920.)

Since China’s economic reforms started, a rush of migrant workers from villages has provided legions of construction workers, factory workers, and other workers who have provided the muscle and verve to power their part of China’s economic transformation. Some 250 million rural migrants now live in China’s cities.

The problem is, the system is still skewed against them. On the one hand, China’s leaders say they want China to become ever more urbanized. They see how bigger cities breed innovation, and use energy and other resources more efficiently on a per capita basis. They also see how infrastructure construction keeps economic growth up, especially for the state-owned enterprises they care about most.

But the migrant workers who are pouring in the cities are not being given a fair chance to transform themselves and their children into China’s urbanites of the future. Deep urban prejudices against rural migrant workers haven’t gone away. The condescending sneers might be slightly more hidden than before, but many urban parents still don’t want their kids in classes with rural migrant kids. In a fiercely competitive environment, they don’t want these ‘backward’ village kids to slow down the rest. They don’t seem to care that many of these village kids will become fellow citizens of the city, so it’s in the interests of those already living there that they be well-educated, socialized to urban living and able to contribute to the fullest of their potential.

The government isn’t exactly helping. It has resisted getting rid of the “hukou,” or residence permit system, that Mao Zedong had put in place to keep the farmers on the farm, while preserving urban privileges. So much for the Communist revolution waged in the name of workers and peasants. Migrant laborers, when they come to cities, may or may not be able to get their kids into established urban schools. And many purpose-built migrant schools have been shut down by local city governments.

Even if migrant kids get into urban primary schools, they’re still required to go back to their villages for an inferior level of education in high school. And then they have to take national college entrance exams, where the students who live in cities from birth, and go to the better urban schools, need lower scores to get into university. It effectively enforces an established hierarchy – great for the urban elite, not so much for the aspiring rural poor.

It should then come as no surprise that as income disparity and underclass frustration grow, so does the number of protests in China. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank, now pegs it as about 180,000 protests a year, or almost 500 a day.

Most are linked to land grabs by local governments, eager to make a buck by taking land away from villagers and selling it to developers. This has happened so much, throughout China, that the central government is concerned China is coming close to not having enough land under cultivation to feed its people.

China has passed another milestone this past year – now, some 500 million Chinese are online. Most are in cities, but a growing number are in China’s rural areas. Most Chinese now also have mobile phones, including villagers – and it’s given them a powerful tool to communicate and organize when they feel aggrieved, and want to be heard. China’s leaders are scrambling to keep up, and control the conversation.

The story of China in the decades to come will likely not just be one of economic and urban growth – but of an ever-more sophisticated population, challenging the status quo, and – in virtual and urban environments — having an ever-richer conversation about what they’d like China to be and become. The challenge for China’s leaders is to do more than try to contain or keep up with this conversation. It’s to recognize the change, and transform themselves. Whatever great leaps China has made, in urbanization and the embrace of the Internet, this challenge stands as potentially the biggest leap of all.

But now, as President Ma begins his second-term, some expect China to start ratcheting up pressure to build stronger political ties, and move Taiwan closer to reunification with China.

An early sign of that came in a post-election statement from Beijing. An anchor on China’s state-run television read a summary: “The Mainland is willing to join hands with the people of Taiwan from all walks of life, as they break new ground in peaceful development in cross-straits relations.”

Then came the kicker.

“This is on the basis of continuing to oppose Taiwan independence, and sticking to the 1992 consensus.”

The 1992 consensus really wasn’t a consensus. Beijing sees it as an agreement with Taiwan that there is one China, and it’s the People’s Republic of China, the PRC, with Taiwan as its province.

Taipei sees the agreement as the two sides agree to disagree on what “one China” means. For many Taiwanese, it’s a divided China, which may or may not ever reunite.

Actually, these days, a majority of Taiwanese identify themselves as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese, and don’t want to move toward reunification any time soon, and there are signs China’s getting impatient with that.

“China suffers from the rising challenger’s disease,” said Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii, who was in Taiwan for the elections. Roy was referring to how China is increasingly challenging the United States and the status quo in their balance of power – especially related to Taiwan. He said China went easy on President Ma for a couple of years – increasing trade, improving ties, making no threats, and saying it could be patient.

“In short order,” Roy said, “we started hearing about debates breaking out among Chinese elites about whether China’s policy was being too tolerant toward Taiwan, allowing Taiwan to take advantage of the concessions China was offering without offering anything in return to the Chinese, the benefits the Chinese wanted, the political benefits.”

By that he means, political benefits that would draw Taiwan inextricably into Mainland China’s orbit, as increasing economic dependence already has.

Last October, Ma raised the possibility of a peace accord with China. It created an uproar in Taiwan. So he backed off and said he’d never do such a thing without a referendum. His re-election won’t change that, he said this weekend.

“That doesn’t mean I will go even faster,” Ma said, after his victory this weekend. “I will control the pace to make sure people can support it.”

Good thing, too, because while Ma won a majority, it was a much smaller majority than last time. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party got almost 46 percent of the vote, which could be a useful thing for Ma to point out to China’s leaders, if they pressure him for more concessions. Push too much, he could say, and you risk having a DPP president next time around. The DPP tends to favor a separate Taiwan identity.

The question is whether that’s enough incentive for China to stay patient. Denny Roy of the East-West Center said there’s one thing Beijing is increasingly impatient about – US arms sales to Taiwan.

“Arms sales remain an impending train wreck,” Roy said. “The Ma Ying-jeou position, that arms sales contribute to peaceful cross-strait relations, is the exact opposite of the PRC position, that arms sales contribute to tensions across the Taiwan Strait. One must assume that there’s a limit to Chinese tolerance of that contradiction.”

Roy added that the strength of the US commitment to Taiwan seems – unofficially – to be ebbing. At the same time, China is fast building up its military capability for, among other things, taking control of a populated island like Taiwan.

But that’s not really how China’s leaders want to play it. They’re also doing outreach to ordinary Taiwanese people, offering scholarships and cultural events. They’d rather seduce than overpower — far less messy, far less costly. But the suitor seems to be getting tired of waiting, and many Taiwanese wonder whether President Ma has the strength to hold out, and the canniness to keep China playing a softer game.

President Obama, you can relax. This story isn’t about you. It’s about Taiwan’s incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou. He’s up for re-election on Saturday, and the race is too close to call.

Ma defended his record this week.

“I have actually accomplished a lot in the last four years” – for instance, calmed down tensions with China, opened up direct flights, shipping and postal services, signed new trade agreements, created jobs, lowered inflation, boosted economic growth and worked to clean up corruption. So Ma’s asking for another term.

“In the first four years, I worked to reorient Taiwan back on the right track,” he said. “I think I have largely accomplished what I set out to do.”

It seems many Taiwanese think differently. The challenger, Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party or DPP, has almost as much support as Ma, the incumbent.

Tsai’s spokeswoman, Hsiao Bi-Khim, said it’s about the economy.

“We have been critical of the way that benefits have not been adequately distributed in our society over the past few years,” Hsiao said. “For example, we have experienced a GDP growth rate. However, we believe that the wealth created, the growth created, is concentrated only among a few select businesses or interest groups.”

“We have to give them a little room. For me, I think even four years is not enough,” said Alice Chen.

Chen’s talking about both Ma Ying-jeou and Barack Obama. Chen lives in Seattle and has dual Taiwanese and US citizenship, so she’ll be voting in two presidential elections this year.

“Obama’s first term, I didn’t vote for him. I voted for more experienced, McCain,” Chen said. “But since Obama’s point is take care of everyone, everyone should have health insurance, he tried. Then I realized, I have to support him, because I like his policy.”

Same with Ma Ying-jeou, she said. Her brother, Keenan Chang, who lives in Taiwan, strongly agrees.

“After Ma Ying-jeou took power, we don’t worry about a war with China.

We don’t want war, we want peace,” Chang said.

He added that Taiwan’s last president, Chen Shui-bian, from the DPP, played an unnecessary and dangerous game of brinksmanship with China, which hurt Taiwan’s economy. He worries about what another DPP president might do.

But many DPP supporters worry that President Ma may give Mainland China too much, and erode Taiwan’s autonomy in the process.

Still, on the way to a rally for President Ma, I bump into a DPP supporter.

“Before, I never attend the KMT rally,” said the man, referring to Ma’s party. “So I want to see how many people, and what are the elements.”

After that, he said, he planned to move on to see his preferred candidate – Tsai Ing-wen. The man told me that he hoped for a woman president.

“I think woman is better,” he said. He also thinks President Ma is too beholden to elites and special interests, even if he does give Ma credit for working out a more constructive relationship with China.

At the rally, a packed crowd gives Ma credit for that and more.

“I have confidence in Ma. He’s been doing very well over the last four years, and he’s got a big horizon,” said Karen Zuo, another Taiwanese-American who’s returned to vote.

Zuo’s father was in Chiang Kai-shek’s army, and went with him to Taiwan in 1949.

For most of the time since, China’s insistence that Taiwan is a province that must reunite with the Motherland has kept Taiwan on edge.

The past four years have been different – the demand hasn’t gone away, but it’s been muted. So, in this election, voters can afford to think more about domestic issues, and about Taiwan’s future as Taiwan.

Whoever wins tomorrow, that’s no small accomplishment.

The song’s satirical lyrics resonated with many young urban Chinese, who find to their dismay that a nothing-special apartment costs about 30 times their average annual income. “Happiness Lane” gave voice to growing frustration and resentment about an economic system that increasingly favors elites – especially those with Communist Party connections — and leaves others behind.

The singer, Chuanzi – real name Jiang Yachuan — started playing songs and writing music when he was a young man serving a stint in prison for starting a fight. He got out on good behavior, and kept singing. Now middle-aged, married, and raising a young daughter, he still sports the look of a rebel – long hair, long beard, a schlumpy style of dress.

I thought of Chuanzi when I started putting together a story on political humor in China. He readily agreed to be interviewed. He mentioned he was about to record a new song, and also agreed when I asked if I could come to the studio to watch.

He laid down the tracks – about how hard it was for young Chinese to afford to get married, buy a house and raise a child. He listened, chain-smoking, as the song was mixed. His wife sat quietly in the corner. His agent, a young woman named Wu Ting, also looked on.

At one point, she leaned over to a Chinese friend who’d come with me, and who’d helped arrange the interview. She asked what I’d be writing about. Political satire in China, my friend replied. Wu Ting was not pleased.

“It’s best not to air China’s dirty laundry to foreigners.” Minutes later, though, Wu Ting and Chuanzi were asking me eagerly about the possibility of touring in the United States.

Pekinese in the window. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

Shaking off the incongruity, I got out my recorder and asked Chuanzi about the black-humored tone of his songs.

“I think the black humor is because most of us feel resigned to life,” he said. “We feel a lot of pressure in society, the pressure to survive. Playing music is one way to console our souls – whether it is to soothe people’s hearts or poke fun at life. It’s to help people get out of their hard situation.”

Just poking fun at life, I asked, or poking fun at the system that makes life hard?

“I’m poking fun at the difficulties in our life, the difficulties we need to face,” he said. “By poking fun, we gain a certain amount of momentum or a certain amount of power to change our lives. But the system, I don’t think we can change… I think I’m a very small potato. I think I’m too weak by myself to change things. But if we stick together – we artists – it’s possible to change the society, and even the system, and to push it forward.”

Chuanzi went on to complain about counterfeit products in China, about unsafe food and milk and cooking oil.

“We need to rely on our responsibility and our consciousness,” he said. “It’s a generation of lack of consciousness, and reliability and trust among people. We should, through our music, raise people’s consciousness, and improve their moral bottom line.”

Chuanzi’s agent was becoming agitated. She took her mobile phone and stepped out of the restaurant. She came back, and pulled Chuanzi aside. When he rejoined the interview, it was like a politically correct clone had taken his place. I asked what needed to change in the system to bring about the social change he desired.

“I think this is a question for the State Council (China’s main governing body) and the National People’s Congress (China’s legislature) to resolve,” he said. “We ordinary people have no right to speak on this.”

His agent left the table again. Again, she was on the phone. Again, she called Chuanzi away – and this time, put him on the phone. When he came back, he said there was an emergency at his recording company, and they all had to go. On their way out, the agent pulled aside my Chinese friend, and said she was cutting short the interview, on the advice of his recording company, because my questions were too sensitive. If I wanted to interview Chuanzi in the future, she said, I’d have to submit questions in advance for approval.

When my friend relayed this to me, I joked that this suddenly felt more like dealing with petty provincial Communist officials than with a folksinger known for his sharp social commentary. “All that’s missing is a demand for preapproval of my story,” I said.

A few minutes later, in came a text message, demanding preapproval of my story.

“I’m the manager of singer Chuanzi’s record company,” read the message from Xue Feng, manager of the recording company 13th Month. “Thanks for your interest in Chuanzi and his music. But based on the artists’ contract, we need to approve all publicity. Please send the report to us for review before broadcast. If anything unauthorized is broadcast, we reserve the right to take legal action. Thank you again.”

Ah, threats. Always the way to a journalist’s heart. I thought of the many times colleagues in China had been threatened by one government department or another – by those who must have actually thought this would lead to more favorable coverage. I thought of China’s ongoing quest for soft power in the world, and how simultaneous tactics of bullying smaller neighbors weren’t exactly helping the cause. And I thought about how a system affects the people in it, even those who make their name criticizing what the system does to people.

Chuanzi is a talented guy, who’s made his name singing about the inequalities of life in modern China. It’s a sad irony that those now making money off of him, and helping him make some of his own, seek to muffle his voice in the process. It’s a sad commentary on the state of free expression in China that they feel they should.

Hexiefarm cartoon (Photo courtesy of Hexiefarm)

“When the situation is getting tougher, the humor is getting stronger. That has been always the case,” said Xiao Qiang, who runs China Digital Times, a website that follows news and web trends in China. He said in this past year, as Chinese authorities have tried to step up control in the wake of pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, China’s online humor has, if anything, gotten sharper.

“Because especially when it comes to political and social matters, where there’s always a sense of repression there, speaking truth to power requires a lot of courage, and there’s risk involved,” Xiao said. “But humor can smooth that out.”

When two high-speed trains collided last summer, a former journalist named Liu Dongdong took a Chinese rock classic and rewrote the lyrics to create a satirical critique of government mismanagement – of the hi-speed train project, and of the accident.

The song quickly got millions of hits.

“These days in China, people are under a lot of pressure, and sometimes they feel helpless,” said Liu Dongdong. “I hope doing these songs helps relieve some of that pressure – and maybe even gets a little attention from the authorities so they do something about the problems.”

Figuring out what you can say online, and when, is a little like surfing, according to Liu – you catch a wave and ride it in while you can. You get your spoof out before the authorities realize what it is and take it down.

Another satirist who knows that drill goes by the name Crazy Crab. I asked if the authorities know his real name.

“I’m wondering that myself,” Crazy Crab said. “If they don’t know, I’m sure they’re trying to find out.”

Crazy Crab does an online cartoon inspired by George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” His is called Hexie Farm. Hexie can mean crab, or harmony. The Communist Party’s stated desire is for a “harmonious society” – that is, one without challenge to its rule. Hexie Farm is run by a Party, too, which is trying to usher in a “great, glorious and correct” era of harmony. Crazy Crab considers it a badge of honor that Hexie Farm is now a blocked search term in China. He said China’s leaders don’t really have a sense of humor.

“If they do, I can’t see it,” he said. “Their humor is unintentional; it comes from the absurd contrast between what they say and what they do.”

Xiao Qiang of China Digital Times agrees that the system doesn’t really breed leaders with a sense of humor, or even an individual sense of style. And yet, those leaders ignore political humor at their peril, especially from China’s younger generation. Xiao said they expect more from their leaders.

“They want more freedom, and humor, in the basic sense, is to carry a message,” Xiao said. “That message, in the political humor, is no less than demanding a freer society, a more equal and just society, and pointing to the fact that the power in China today is unaccountable to its own people.”

Yet many of those coming up with snarky satire don’t really believe the system is going to change anytime soon.

Chuanzi (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“I make fun of the difficulties we face in life. We can try to change our lives, but we can’t change the system,” Chuanzi said.

When I asked if he really believes that, he responded, “Well, I’m too small and weak. But if we stick together, musicians and other artists, maybe we can make some change to society.”

Chuanzi’s agent, who was sitting nearby, didn’t like the direction this interview was taking. Artists like Ai Weiwei got arrested for using humor to push for social and political change – although, much more aggressively and persistently than Chuanzi is doing here. The agent cut off the interview, and told me if I want to interview Chuanzi again, I’ll have to submit questions in advance– just like applying to talk to a Chinese government official.

A good satirist could have a field day with this.

Singing Contest 'Super Girl' (Photo: Shizhao/Wiki Commons)

Satellite broadcasters in China have cut entertainment TV by two-thirds following a government campaign, state news agency Xinhua has reported.

An order by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) to curb ”excessive entertainment” came into effect on January 1st.

The number of entertainment shows aired during prime time each week has dropped from 126 to 38, said the watchdog.

However, as The World’s Mary Kay Magistad explains, savvy Chinese youth are simply turning away from their televisions, and switch on laptops and pirated western DVDs instead.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: Too much reality on television has lead authorities in China to crackdown on TV entertainment. Officials want fewer programs like this one, called If You Are the One, China’s answer to The Dating Game. A new policy went into effect on January 1 that restricts the number of such programs Chinese TV stations can air. The effect has been immediate. The 126 prime time entertainment on offer on Chinese TV in December have dwindled to 38 now. The programs that have been axed vary, according to The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing.

Mary Kay Magistad: Game shows, dating shows, celebrity shows, talent shows where viewers vote, although they’ve already cut back on those, time travel shows, spy dramas and basically anything that the government feels is not implicating appropriate socialist values…anything where people are encouraged to be materialistic or sexual bawdy, or not to think enough about the sacrifices that the party made to give people the welfare and rices that they have now.

Werman: Okay, and before we go on, how does time travel programming fit into that?

Magistad: Well, that’s a really good question and I can only hazard to guess that if you were to say travel back in your time capsule, or car or whatever to say, 1945. And imagine a future where someone other than the Communist Party came to power things could get kind of interesting.

Werman: Mm, gotcha, okay. Now describe for us this show, Super Girl, which apparently has been one of the shows that’s cut. What’s wrong with it specifically?

Magistad: Well, Super Girl, it’s been constrained and that actually happened a while ago. Super Girl was wildly popular with huge swaths of the population. People would go out and campaign on the streets for the Super Girl who they wanted to win.

Werman: And it’s a talent show?

Magistad: It’s a talent show, it’s like American Idol.

Werman: But only for girls?

Magistad: But only for girls.

Werman: Right.

Magistad: Or young women. And then people would really get into voting. And the government looked around at this and was like uh, no, we’re not going to encourage this. And in fact when I went out and talked to people when they banned voting for Super Girl and said we’re just going to have judges in the studio, a number of people I talked to said but this was really great and I hope at some point in the future I’ll actually get a chance for my leaders for the government, which is exactly what the government didn’t want people to be thinking about.

Werman: Now, President Hu said we must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China. Why is this happening now?

Magistad: President Hu has been thinking a lot about how China can project its culture out into the world. It looks at the soft power that American culture has, the ability to attract, the ability to make others want to emulate you. And he’s thinking I want China to have that. Not just him, but the Communist Party in general. But they don’t know how to go about it. So they spent billions of dollars on Chinese television for external broadcasts. They have their Confucius Institutes around the world where they’re teaching Chinese and having Chinese cultural programs, but it’s still not taking the way they’d like it too. And indeed the television, and films and video games coming into China from the West are attracting Chinese youth. They’re much more interested in seeing a lot of that than they are seeing the sorts of programs that the Chinese government would like them to be focusing on. And what’s interesting here is the government seems to think that by limiting entertainment programming on television it will get China’s youth to sit down in front of the screen and watch what they want them to watch. But these are young people who have computers and have smartphones, and have pirated DVDs, and they can basically do whatever they like, so it’s kind of a losing game.

Werman: So this weekend practically speaking would you be able to go out in Beijing and see any Hollywood movie you wanted?

Magistad: You could go out in Beijing and go to a DVD store which is a legitimate store selling pirated DVDs. It’s very hard to actually find a non-pirated DVD in China. And you can get releases from 2-3 weeks ago that are still showing in American theaters.

Werman: The World’s Asia correspondent Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing talking about new restrictions on entertainment programming in China. Thank you very much.

Magistad: Thank you, Marco.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Their former leader, Kim Jong-il, died 10 days ago. And Thursday, his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, led a memorial service.

Eulogies were read out in front of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians as they stood, heads bowed, in the central square.

And then, there was the silence.

Silence can be a powerful thing. There’s the pause in a speech that adds extra weight. The moment of silence before a performance begins. Or, sometimes, a performance itself.

In composer John Cage’s “4 minutes, 33 seconds,” a full BBC orchestra remains silent onstage, formally dressed, instruments poised. This audience is first game, then restless. Tension builds.

Finally, the first “movement” ends, and the conductor turns the page and wipes his brow.

The audience laughs, some cough, and there’s palpable release, even after just a couple of minutes of shared total silence.

Thursday, North Koreans shared their own silence – kind of.

Horns blared in the country’s capital, marking the three minutes North Koreans were to stand silent, shoulder to shoulder in public squares, bowing to mourn the passing of the man they called Dear Leader.

The ceremony was also meant to turn a page, as with a speech by a top general.

“But now we stand by Kim Jung-un. Kim Jong-un is a great leader. We will serve Kim Jong-un as the highest official. And under his leadership, we will complete this nation,” the general said.

The head of North Korea’s legislature also said, “Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s Supreme Leader, who inherits our great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage. “

It’s hard to know whether all those standing silent think that’s a good thing. Criticism of the Kim family is silenced in North Korea, sometimes by imprisonment, sometimes by death. Most don’t dare, and keep silent.

In China, the country’s leaders wish more Chinese would do the same. Dozens of activists and civil rights lawyers have been imprisoned and silenced this year. Two writers Chen Wei and Chen Xi, received prison sentences of a decade or so each last week – for writing articles criticizing the government and calling for political reform.

And Thursday, lawyer Ni Yulan and her husband Dong Jiqin went on trial for helping victims of government-backed land grabs. They could face their own imposed silence.

Silence can be powerful. It can be eloquent, or oppressive. It can open up new spaces for the imagination, or shut them down. Only those experiencing a silence know which it is for them. Only once the silence ends, can they say.

The silence Thursday is in contrast to the screaming and crying Wednesday during the Kim Jong-il funeral procession.

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Lisa Mullins: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad is in the capital of North Korea’s closest and perhaps only ally, China. Mary Kay watched the funeral procession on TV in Beijing today. What were your impressions?

Mary Kay Magistad: Well, it was very somber with the snow falling and the North Korean announcer saying in mournful tones that this was the sky weeping for the dear leader. There certainly was an outpouring of grief. It almost felt like the reciprocal pep rally where different sections of the crowd were trying to outdo each other in how loudly they could weep, how much they could jump up and down and bend over double as the hurst went past them. It was meant to mark the passing of a leader the people were meant to revere as a god and to allow them to see his son, Kim Jong Un, walking beside the hurst as the heir apparent. Sort of a moment for North Koreans to just concentrate their minds and recognize that they’re moving into a new era. And at least to that extent it accomplished its purpose.

Mullins: Let’s talk about the new era in a second, but you also saw the funeral, you were in South Korea at the time, of Kim Il Sung, this was Kim Jong Il’s father. He did in 1994. That was broadcast at least in South Korea, but what were the differences from that funeral to this one?

Magistad: Well, one of the similarities is that it was almost the same funeral, the same route moving the body from the same place to another place, and it was Kim Jong Il, the son, who choreographed his father’s funeral. So in a sense he also choreographed his funeral, but what was different is that for Kim Il Sung I think people still really believed in him as this supernaturally great leader. I had been in North Korea in 1989 and then again in 2005 and it was really dramatic to me how much of a difference there was in how people talked about the leadership. In 1989 it really was like they were talking about someone they believed in as though he were a god.

Mullins: This is Kim Il Sung.

Magistad: Kim Il Sung.

Mullins: The founder of modern North Korea.

Magistad: In 2005 they were still saying the words, but it almost seemed like there was an edge of cynicism as they said them. And one reason for this could be that there had been a famine in the 1990s during which between one and two million North Koreans died or believed to have died. The economy had contracted and by the time Kim Jong Il died the average North Korean lifespan is now 3-1/2 years shorter than it was when he came to power.

Mullins: Well, bearing all of that in mind could it be that the grief that we saw during this funeral procession today, could it be that it really was genuine?

Magistad: I’m sure some of it was, but the likelihood that that many people standing out in the cold for that many hours could turn it on like that when the hurst went by with that much intensity, I think some of it was probably done for theatrical effect.

Mullins: Did anything about today’s events tell you who is in control in North Korea? If it is indeed Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un?

Magistad: Well, certainly, Kim Jong Un was walking next to the hurst and the funeral cortege. Near him were his uncle, Jang Song Taek, who is considered to be sort of a regent or at least a guide for him in his new role, and also the army chief of staff, Ri Yong Ho. So it’s sort of the old guard who are expected to give Kim Jong a fair bit of guidance as he takes up the role of leader of North Korea.

Mullins: What about South Korea, what’s the reaction been there?

Magistad: In South Korea as when Kim Il Sung died people are sort of shrugging and getting on with life. I mean I think there is a little bit of alertness to see what might Kim Jong Un do to try to earn his stripes. And just in the past year or so he’s taken a more prominent role in the party, it appears that he has clamped down a bit on North Koreans who are trying to escape to get to China, to South Korea. And there have been purges within the party that he is said to have been behind. So it’s unclear what his leadership style is going to be and how much of it is going to be him and how much of it will be those behind him, but South Koreans are certainly interested in finding out as time goes on and of course, so is China.

Mullins: The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing, thank you.

Magistad: Thank you, Lisa.

Mullins: Mary Kay has been updating her Twitter stream with the latest on North Korea. You can follow her @marykaymagistad. To get the latest news about the changing of the guard in North Korea from our partners at the BBC, extensive coverage at theworld.org.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is “The World”. North Korea is preparing for a funeral later this week to bid farewell to its dear leader, Kim Jong Il. Meanwhile, Kim’s successor, the youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, has a new title. He’s been named head of North Korea’s ruling party. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad has been following these latest developments. She’s now in Beijing and, Mary Kay, there are several titles that Kim Jong-Un is now going to assume. Why don’t you [xx] them out for us?

Mary Kay Magistad: OK. So perhaps the most important is that he has been acknowledged as being the head of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of the Communist Party of North Korea, and this gives him authority over both political and military matters. This comes on top of the state media in North Korea on Saturday, referring to him as the supreme commander of North Korea’s million plus armed forces. If there had been any question of whether the armed forces were going to go along with a twenty something year old leader who hasn’t actually served in the military, although he now holds the title of general, it seems that that’s been accepted so far.

Mullins: Alright. And what other titles is he assuming?

Magistad: Well, we don’t quite know yet. Kim Jong-Un hasn’t yet had an honorific attached to his name that stuck. North Korean state media, at one point this week, referred to him as ‘the dear leader’ at least in translation. That’s what we were reading here. It seemed a little. . .

Mullins: Even though that was his dad’s. . .

Magistad: Exactly. So it seems a little odd and it seems like they’re still sort of trying to figure out what they should call him.

Mullins: Well, if one is to try and read the tea leaves on whether or not there are those who feel as though this new leader of North Korea is unprepared, the pictures tell a lot. The pictures of who is standing next to this new North Korean leader during official events.

Magistad: Right. Just in the last couple of days, Kim Jong-Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was seen standing near him in a general’s uniform. It was the first time that the uncle had been seen in a military uniform with Kim Jong-Un thus far. It is believed that the uncle and his wife will be playing some sort of a guiding role. Kim Jong-Un has shown signs of not particularly liking this arrangement of seeing his uncle as being kind of the old guard, so it will be interesting to see how that particular relationship plays out in the coming weeks and months.

Mullins: I wonder also where Kim Jong-Un’s older brother who was passed over for the job of the next leader, where he stands on all this politically and how much he’s even being shown in public, if he’s going to be attending the funeral on Wednesday or not, do we know?

Magistad: Yeah, all really interesting questions. This is Kim Jong-nam who is about forty. There was an unconfirmed report in the Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s news agency today, saying that he had traveled to Beijing and is “under Chinese protection” and that it’s unclear whether he’ll be going to the funeral or not. Now he’s been spending quite a bit of his time in Macau over the past few months. That’s sort of a gambling Mecca where a lot of Chinese officials go to spend their money. It’s a place that’s relatively free, certainly compared to North Korea, but even compared to China, and he’s been quoted in recent days saying things like “I don’t think that North Korea should have a hereditary leadership and we really should be moving towards having more political reform,” and when people have asked him whether he had any interest in becoming leader of North Korea, he said, “Yeah, no. I’m just a son of Kim Jong Il. I’m not leadership material,” but of course, people look to him and wonder, you know, what he’s really thinking. They look to the second son, Kim Jong-chul, who Kim Jong Il rejected as being too effeminate, one of the last times he was seen was at an Eric Clapton concert in Singapore a few months back wearing an earring and a pair of dark glasses and also didn’t really look like leadership material for North Korea as it is today.

Mullins: Well, I guess more will be known later in the week on Wednesday, when we find out who in the family actually makes the trip to the funeral and what transpires there and what’s shown to the rest of the world. The World’s Mary Kay Magistad in Beijing. Thanks a lot.

Magistad: Thank you, Lisa.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

But for encouragement in blazing his own path, he might want to look at the record of someone who came to power at an even younger age.

When Norodom Sihanouk became king of Cambodia in the early 1940s, the French colonial government breathed easy. Here was an 18-year-old playboy prince, they could easily manipulate. Or so they thought.

A dozen years later, Sihanouk sent them packing, and declared Cambodia an independent, non-aligned state. That such a young leader could so defy expectations might be an encouraging thought for young Kim Jung Un, as he ponders his future.

This week, Kim Jong Un paid his respects to his father, lying in state, strolling in with his stylish semi-shaved haircut, his black suit filled out by many a good meal. Behind him stood the party elders who may support and guide him – or, may try to manipulate him, as the French tried with Sihanouk.

Behind him stood the party elders who may support and guide him – or, may try to manipulate him, as the French tried with Sihanouk.

Sihanouk happens to be a long-time friend of North Korea. North Korea’s first leader, Kim Il Sung, gave Sihanouk a villa in Pyongyang, which he used often. Kim also gave Sihanouk use of a North Korean film crew, and in the 1960s, Sihanouk would make movies starring himself, his wife and children, and his ministers.

The storylines of these films tended to be similar – a handsome young prince learns about a plot to bring him down, and through his ingenuity and righteousness, puts down the threat and preserves peace and happiness in his kingdom.

By the time these films were made, in the ’60s, Sihanouk had been in power for a quarter century, and it was kind of going to his head. He’d been so good at outmaneuvering the French, he tried to do the same thing by playing opposing sides off each other during the Vietnam War. That included letting Vietnam ship weapons across Cambodia, which led to the US bombing Cambodia.

In Australian filmmaker Jim Gerrand’s “The Prince and the Prophecy,” Sihanouk explained what he was trying to do.
“I did not want to do harm to the United States. I like Western culture…My wife is half-French, half-Cambodian. No Vietnamese blood. And I did not consort with any Vietnamese girl when I was a playboy,” Sihanouk said. But he added, “By patriotism, I had to help the North Vietnamese, and I got their promise to respect always Cambodia as an independent state.”

That’s not quite how it worked out.

Sihanouk’s general, Lon Nol, didn’t like how Sihanouk was cozying up to the Vietnamese. So Lon Nol staged a coup, and Sihanouk was out. The Chinese then persuaded Sihanouk to become a figurehead leader of the communist Khmer Rouge. Many Cambodians joined him – because they revered Sihanouk and wanted him back in power. But this time, it was the Khmer Rouge who outmaneuvered him. They used him to come to power, and once there, they put him under palace arrest and killed several members of his family. Almost two million other Cambodians also died under Khmer Rouge rule.

Still, years later, Sihanouk told filmmaker Jim Gerrand he stood by his record.

“I do not think that I make serious mistakes. May I quote?,” he said, reaching for notes he had on his lap, from something a diplomat had said about him. ‘Sihanouk made mistakes like any other man, but he was a fantastic diplomat and a great nationalist. He kept his people happy, well-fed and at peace by walking a very thin tightrope between the big powers.’”

Kim Jung Un has a little tightrope walking of his own to do now. So the lessons for him?

Use low expectations to your advantage, and do it early. Don’t make deals with China without thinking carefully about the consequences. And don’t get too drunk on your early successes.

In the end, Sihanouk failed in his own tightrope walking, and Cambodians suffered for it. North Koreans are already suffering. They can only hope their new young leader offers them something better.

It was a little much for one observer, who remarked on a Chinese newspaper website: “Paying respects to a leader doesn’t have to go so far. After all, everyone will die one day.”

But for China’s leaders, somber condolences were the order of the day. On Tuesday, President Hu Jintao visited the North Korean embassy in Beijing, as did his likely successor, current Vice President Xi Jinping, other officials and other visitors, carrying bouquets of white flowers. Foreign journalists, looking for visas to cover Kim Jong-Il’s funeral, were told to come back next year.

North Korea has turned inward for 13 days of mourning, limiting the flow of traffic across its usual trading point with China, at Dandong. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu delivered a statement from China’s top leadership.

“We are shocked to learn that DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — North Korea’s official name) top leader comrade Kim Jong Il passed away and we hereby express our deep condolences on his demise and send sincere regards to the DPRK people,” the statement read. “Comrade Kim Jong-il was a great leader of the DPRK people, and an intimate friend of the Chinese people, and he had made important contributions to developing the DPRK’s socialist cause and promoting good-neighborly and cooperative relations between China and the DPRK.”

Kim didn’t always cooperate as China might have liked. He resisted calls to enact economic reforms; he made sure years of nuclear disarmament talks that China hosted went nowhere; and much to China’s dismay, he launched missiles or carried out nuclear tests whenever he wanted to get international attention and food aid.

North Korea gets most of its food and fuel from China, and that’s become more important this year, with about six million North Koreans – a quarter of the population — in need of food aid, in the face of a bad harvest and UN sanctions. North Korea also supports a million-man army, which needs its food and fuel, too.

“I think it’s clear that the sanctions had been biting, that they’d taken a toll, that the North has definite cash-flow problems,” says Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, the International Crisis Group’s Northeast Asia project manager. “And I think North Korea is fundamentally uncomfortable with having to rely on China. Ideally, they’d like to be able to balance out that dependency with the Russians, with the Americans, with any other European country, some of which are already quite engaged with North Korea.”

It may be with the expectation of food aid that North Korea announced on Saturday – around the same time Kim Jong Il is said to have died – that it would suspend its uranium enriched nuclear weapons program, a central U.S. demand for the resumption of disarmament talks.

Whether such talks would lead anywhere is another question. Brian Myer, an international relations professor at Dongseo University in Seoul, told the BBC he doesn’t expect new leader Kim Jung-Un to veer significantly from his father’s path when it comes to North Korea’s nuclear program.

“I think he’ll want to make progress, not in the sense we would use, but for him, I think progress means further weaponizing the nuclear potential he has,” Meyer said. “North Korea really has no reason to disarm or to make peace with the United States, because if it were to do so, it would really lose all reason to exist outside South Korea as a separate state.”

Kim Jong Il, and his father Kim Il Sung before him, kept power by isolating the North Korean population, and feeding it stories both of North Korea’s superiority to all other places, and of the imminent threat of attack from external enemies — the United States, especially. That’s justified the expense of keeping a huge army, and maintaining a “military first” policy. But with ever more North Koreans succeeding in traveling to China and coming back with stories of the outside and pirated DVDs, a growing number of North Koreans are getting a clearer idea of what the outside world is like, and how much they’re suffering by comparison.

Still, power remains in the hands of the elites, with the Kim family at the core. And North Korea’s nuclear program provides insurance that North Korea won’t become the next Libya or Iraq. It’s also a bargaining chip for aid, which has proven lucrative over time, especially to North Korea’s small core of elites. The urge for those elites to protect their privileges – while much of the population suffers – may help the succession go smoothly, in the short run. Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group said the concern is what might happen later.

“Our greatest worry would be that if Kim Jung Un or his closest supporters feel insecure or weak enough, if for example, there were splits in the leadership, they might feel they have to demonstrate their military prowess, and we might go back to a phase of seeing more provocation,” Kleine-Ahlbrandt said.

But for now, the focus is on presenting a united front, mourning the dead, marking the passing of one era and the beginning of another. Whether the young third-generation heir to a socialist dynasty can do any better for his country than his father did, China’s leaders stand ready to offer help and guidance.

On Tuesday, they invited Kim Jung-Un to visit, once a decent interval has passed.

“And did you see Mohammed Ali, above my desk?” Rudatsimburwa says, running a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair as he enters his cluttered office. The poster is of a young, weaving Mohammed Ali, with the line, “I’m so fast, last night I switched out the lights and was in bed before the room was dark.”

Not a bad slogan for a radio station that started out, in the last days of 2004, to bring something fresh to the Rwandan radio scene.

“When we started, there was only the state radio,” says Rudatsimburwa, who had just returned from Belgium, where he grew up. “That was the model. So we wanted to show what it could be, having entertaining morning shows, nice news. There had been a kind of post-genocide trauma, self-censorship culture. So we were trying to tell people that things could be different.”

Radio has had a dark side in Rwanda. The station Radio Mille Collines helped incite the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 people. Even now, radio remains Rwanda’s most popular media source – not surprising, given that a quarter of the population is illiterate, and many people are too poor to buy a television.

The morning editorial meeting at Contact FM's office in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“Bonjour!” Rudatsimburwa calls out cheerily, as he enters the newsroom for the morning editorial meeting. The dozen or so young reporters swivel their chairs to face him, or get up and sit on the edges of desks. They talk through the stories in play – switching between English, French and Kinyarwanda – the local language.

One story in the works on this morning is about an illegal government detention center, for street kids and vagrants.

“So who decides when you can walk out? Based on what?” asks Rudatsimburwa.

“They decide every two weeks whom to release,” replies reporter Richard Ndayambaje, who has been assigned to the story. “Maybe they let you go for the weekend,” another one jokes.

Rudatsimburwa laughs with everyone else, makes his own joke in Kinyarwandan, and then pulls attention back to the story. “If this center is illegal, someone has to explain how come it’s there. It might be a positive thing, but if it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

Contact FM reporter Richard Ndayambaje(right). (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“You never know what happens to you,” he says. “But all you have to do as a journalist, I think, is report the truth, and wait to see what happens, whether the story has an impact. But I think the more the media develop in Rwanda, the more those incidents are becoming less.”

Ndayambaje, 25, says things are already better than when he started out in professional journalism four years ago. There are now dozens of Rwandan news media outlets, and the government is getting more used to being questioned. It’s even considering passing freedom of information legislation.

But critics of the government say press freedom in Rwanda remains seriously limited.

“Everyone now knows the very negative role the media played in the run-up to the genocide, and I think any responsible government would take measures to avoid that.” says Carina Tersakian, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch who was kicked out of Rwanda last year, and now lives in London. “But what has been happening is that this vaguely defined offense of genocide ideology has been used to target government critics, not only journalists but also opposition politicians and ordinary Rwandans.”

According to a Rwandan Senate report, about 200 people were convicted on the charge of genocide ideology from 2001 to 2006. Some were sentenced to years in prison. Rights groups have expressed concern about how many journalists have been convicted on this charge.

Shyaka Kamura, editor of the newspaper Rwanda Focus, says such rights groups should take a closer look at what some of the convicted journalists have been writing.

“You’ll find someone writing that Hutus, actually it’s their time to rise up,” he says. “We are talking just 17 years after the genocide. And they’ll be publishing stuff that includes incitement.”

Rwandan President Paul Kagame at a news conference. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“We live in this world where some people think they are more right, even more righteous, than others,” he said at a recent news conference. “They set the standard; they want others to do what they are doing, and so on and so forth.” And here, he paused and chuckled softly to himself. “But then, down the road, the very people who claim this position really start messing up, and it undermines their credibility.”

Kagame’s supporters say he has helped bring Rwanda back from the dead, that his government has restored social stability, built up the economy, and encouraged reconciliation – mostly. Others say he rules with too heavy a hand. Some ask why Kagame suspended two newspapers critical of him in the run-up to last year’s national elections, why several journalists say they received threats or had been roughed up, and had to flee the country.

Vocal critic Charles Ingabire fled the country – and was living in Uganda when he was shot dead on November 30, coming out of a bar. He had edited the online Inyenyeri News, which was known for being critical of the government. Another journalist, Jean Leonard Rugambage, deputy editor of Umuvugizi newspaper, was killed in Rwanda last year. His colleagues say he had, at the time, been investigating the shooting in South Africa of a Rwandan general, Kayumba Nyamwasa, who’d fallen out with Kagame. The government has denied involvement in both cases. Rights groups have called for independent investigations.

“The climate for independent journalists in Rwanda right now is pretty bleak,” says Carina Tersakian of Human Rights Watch.

By “‘independent,’ she means those who criticize the government. Rwanda Focus editor Shyaka Kanuma argues that there is room for criticism – not for lies.

“I wouldn’t mind if it were legitimate criticism. But here I am, a Rwandan. I know my country very well. I know the problems we have. I know that Paul Kagame is not a perfect president. He is not a perfect person. But when I see the terrible lies people tell. I know the kinds of challenges we face as journalists in this country. I know the kind of challenges we get accessing information. But does that amount to abuse of human rights? Far from the case!”

The Contact FM office in Kigali, Rwanda. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

“I think that is still – that will take some time. You need the material to brew a political satire,” he says. “You need to see what politicians are doing. And most of the time, it’s not public enough, what they do.”

Then again, he says there’s a funny video on Youtube of a Rwandan comedian at a soiree, imitating President Kagame, while Kagame listened at a nearby table.

“Same voice, same everything, you know? And you could see, some guys in the room were wondering, ‘is this correct?’ And even the president was there. But because he had a big laugh, so everyone relaxed. But before that, I could see that some of them were stressed.”

What Rwandans need, even more than satire, Rudatsimburwa says, is to lose their submissive attitude toward power.

“People need to understand that in a society like this, people are citizens,” he says. And in a society where you have citizens, we’re not supposed to be treated as subjects. There’s not a king there.”

The call-in programs at Contact FM try to encourage people to speak up. And never are there more calls, Rudatsimburwa says, than in the week each April when the station opens up the lines to commemorate the genocide. Survivors call in. A couple of perpetrators have called in to tell their side of the story, and to apologize.

“We also had a call – a guy said, ‘you know what we did in ’94, we’ll do it again.’

The caller’s phone number was traced, and he was arrested.

Contact FM founder and owner Albert Rudatsimburwa. (Photo: Mary Kay Magistad)

But a recent survey by the Prosperity Index in London found that most Rwandans adults feel they have adequate personal freedoms, and trust their government; less than a third trust each other.

Behind the scenes at Contact FM



Mary Kay Magistad’s reports from Rwanda

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