China and the U.S.: Two different styles of world leadership

I re-wrote and expanded the piece first published in Asia Time and was posted here.

The recent spate of summit meetings for national leaders, first the G20 in Hangzhou and then ASEAN and East Asia Summit in Vientiane Laos, rather dramatically displayed the contrasting style of world leadership between China and the U.S. China President Xi’s message to the world was to propose cooperation and collaboration. Obama’s message was to suggest that the rest of the world should follow the lead of American exceptionalism.

The two leaders did agree to abide by the Paris Accord on limiting emission of greenhouse gases. Since China and the U.S. were world’s largest two emitting countries, this joint accord was an influential and important step in encouraging others to follow their lead. On other issues, the two countries took divergent paths.

As the host nation in Hangzhou, China got to set the agenda and gave the opening address. Xi’s said to the conference of leaders that China must no longer depend on old ways of achieving economic growth but must change its economic growth model by becoming a country of innovation and a leader in science and technology.

Having taken 700 million out of poverty within China, which represented about 70% of world’s poverty, Xi went on to say that China’s future economic growth would continue to contribute to the global fight against poverty. It wouldn’t just mean taking more Chinese from poverty but helping other peoples out of their state of poverty as well. That was the reason he launched the land and maritime Silk Road initiatives.

The so-called One Belt, One Road initiative was to improve the infrastructure along the way from East Asia to Western Europe and all points in between.  The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank formed concurrent to the OBOR for the purpose of facilitating the launching such projects has already begun financing some of the projects.

Improving the infrastructure of the countries on the Silk Road would invariably improve the livelihood of the people in those countries. Xi observed, “It is meant to build not China’s own backyard garden but a garden shared by all countries.”

Xi’s stand on collaboration

Xi stood firmly on the side of open trade and investment in the age of economic globalization. Repeatedly, he emphasized that it will be essential to seek win-win models of global growth, that all nations large or small, rich or poor must be treated equally with respect. “The world will be a better place only when everyone is better off,” he said.

Because of conflicts and turmoil, a pandemic refugee crisis, climate change and terrorism, the world’s economy needs a new path for growth. Xi believes that path lies in technology innovation.

China is of course already a successful example of sustaining economic growth via technology innovation. China has 20,000 km of high-speed rail, the world’s largest network, and the longest open water bridges (nearly 100 miles long). These are some of the indicators of technological innovation and development.

On its own, China has sent man into outer space, put a lander to roam the moon and built its own space station. Just recently, China launched the world’s first ever quantum communications satellite. China has also developed its submersible technology such that they can now explore the ocean floor deeper than 4 miles below as well as outer space.

For six years in a row, the world’s fastest super computer belongs to China. China now leads the world in new applications for the mobile phone and new uses via the Internet. China’s economy no longer depends on sweatshops. On the technology muscle beach, China is not the 97-pound weakling.

Rumor on South China Sea

China’s netizens have been having some fun circulating a speculation that the U.S. Navy withdrew from the South China Sea in July for a very good reason. They claimed that the Beijing government had quietly informed Pentagon that China’s missile firing submarines had their radar locked in on the American carriers and strongly suggested that the American fleet vacate the area.

The Pentagon asked the American fleet command for confirmation and the command was amazed to discover that indeed some radar had locked in on the carriers. However, the American on-board finder could not locate where the locking radar was coming from. Thus they quietly hightailed out of the South China Sea.

Imaginative and fanciful perhaps, but if true, this incident is entirely consistent with China’s practice of Sun Zi’s Art of War, namely, the best way to win a battle is not having to fire a shot. I do know that nearly 20 years earlier China did follow another dictum from the Art of War, namely know yourself and know your adversary—albeit in this case China was helping America practice the art of war.

Thomas Reed, an expert on nuclear weapons and former Secretary of Air Force, reported in September 2008 issue of Physics Today, that China in mid-1990’s had intentionally sought out and invited Danny Stillman of Los Alamos to tour China’s nuclear research facilities, which he then did on a number of visits to China.

China’s nuclear scientists while visiting the U.S. found out that Stillman was responsible for gathering intelligence on China’s capability on nuclear weapon development and was thus the contact China wanted. Then Stillman got his book on China’s state of nuclear weapon technology ready for publication but the U.S. government quashed it.

At the time, the Clinton Administration was busy prosecuting Dr. Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos alleging that he stole weapon related secrets for China. Publication of Stillman’s book would have been, at minimum, “inconvenient.” Poor Stillman had to settle for telling the story to Reed years later.

Obama came up empty in Hangzhou

President Obama as he headed to Hangzhou China for the G20 conference had planned on several one-on-one meetings on the sideline with other leaders, in addition to the high profile tea with President Xi. Consistent with his mission as defender of human rights, he was planning to express his concerns to Philippines President Duterte over the thousands of extra-judicial executions of drug lords.

Upon hearing of Obama’s intention, Duterte flew into a rage saying among other things that Philippines is a sovereign nation and no longer a lap-dog of the U.S. As for human rights, he asked rhetorically, what about the hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred by the American soldiers when the U.S. forcibly took over from the Spanish and became the colonial master of Philippines?

Duterte also called Obama the “son of a whore.”  Thanks to the Colbert Report, we now know that Duterte was not the first to use such indelicate language. Another exceptional U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, had called Gorbachev then leader of USSR the same name in his moments of extreme emotion.

Obama’s meeting with Turkey’s President Erdogan also did not go well. Erdogan in front of the foreign press aired his difference with Obama including naming a Kurdish group that the U.S. supports but Turkey considers a terrorist organization. (Of course, Asia Times has reported on numerous occasions that rebel groups fighting Syria’s Assad with U.S. support also fights for Islamic State.)

Perhaps not wishing for another Duterte-like confrontation, and perhaps the price of offending Turkey would be too dear, Obama did not raise questions of human rights in Turkey with Erdogan—human rights issues such as crackdown of the press and the mass arrests that followed the unsuccessful coup.

Obama then proceeded to Laos to attend the ASEAN Summit. He was the first U.S. president to visit Laos and he formally apologized for the “secret” war America inflicted on Laos during the Vietnam conflict. At the time, the Pentagon thought that the North Vietnamese was transiting their supplies through Laos to reach their troops and the Viet Cong in the south. The thinking was that the carpet bombing of Laos would put a stop to the flow of supplies.

Long after the end of the Vietnam War, Laos continues to suffer from the aftermath of the massive carpet-bombing by the U.S. Air Force. Decades later, millions of unexploded cluster bombs remain in the countryside. When unwitting farmers and their children accidentally detonate these, the flying shrapnel and projectile have the same deadly affect as landmines and antipersonnel bombs.

Obama’s offer of $30 million per year for three years would barely scratch the surface of the kind of effort that would render Laos’ countryside safe for farming and allow Laos to begin economic recovery. But that’s the oft-repeated tragic consequences of innocent countries and people that got too close to America’s exceptionalism.

To date, the United States has refused to halt the use of cluster bombs. The U.S. reserves the right to kill and maim and at the same time make obscene profits from it.  As Christina Lin pointed out in Asia Times, the U.S. even today has been selling cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia to drop on Yemen. Unexploded cluster bombs will someday bedevil the civilians of Yemen as another Laos.

It’s the ultimate irony that the great defender of human rights is also the dominant purveyor and user of lethal takers of human life.  The conscience salving token donations to compensate for the past atrocities and human suffering is a drop in the bucket compared to the profits made on the victims’ bone piles.

Obama went home empty

Obama went to Vientiane to convince the ASEAN countries to take a united stand on South China Sea against China’s position. As New York Times reported, Obama wanted to “put the long-simmering dispute in the South Chin Sea front and center on the agenda at the regional summit.” The ASEAN summit ignored his request and made no mention of South China Sea in their closing statement.

Just the opposite took place. The two leading statements of the concluding Vientiane Declaration from the East Asia Summit read as follows:

“Acknowledging that efficient and sustainable infrastructure development in ASEAN is essential for trade, investment and service competitiveness in the Asia Pacific region; 

“Recognizing that infrastructure decisions and investments made in coming years will be vital to efforts to meet our shared objectives to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty….”

These statements virtually mirror the sentiments expressed by Xi at the G20 and represented a vote of confidence in Xi’s idea of infrastructure investments. The member states were not being swayed by Xi’s eloquence. They became believers of the benefit of collaborating with China because of what they have seen. They have already seen China’s hand in railway projects in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar and separately in Indonesia, hydropower project in Pakistan, port improvement project in Sri Lanka, and revitalization of port of Piraeus in Greece.

Except for South Korea, whose President Pak apparently preferred Obama’s offer of high altitude missile umbrella defense over the benefits of economic cooperation with China, other Asian countries do not see it that way. They see that the American involvement in the Middle East has not left any country better off. Rather they see that the European countries through no fault of their own having to deal with a refugee crisis of gigantic proportions. They see that the American interference in Libya has destabilized that region and left the Italians having to fish drowning refugees out of the sea every day.

The distinction is clear. Xi Jinping offers cooperation and collaboration on a path for common prosperity, no military alliance required nor offered. Obama offers umbrella of missile defense protection and a path to death and destruction, no economic benefits on the table because Uncle Sam is plain broke.

Lessons from G20 Summit: Two different routes to the future

This first appeared in Asia Times.

The just concluded G20 summit had on display the contrasting style of world leadership between China and the U.S. as exhibited by their leaders, Xi Jinping and Barack Obama.

Xi’s message to the world was based on cooperation and collaboration. Obama’s message was for the world to follow the lead of American exceptionalism.

As the host nation, China got to set the agenda and had the advantage of giving the opening remarks. Xi’s opening address was to announce that China must embark on changing its economic growth model by becoming a country of innovation and a leader in science and technology.

Having taken 700 million out of poverty within China, Xi went on to say that China would continue to contribute to the global fight against poverty. That was the reason he launched the land and maritime Silk Road initiatives.

The so-called one belt, one road initiative was to improve the infrastructure along the way from East Asia to Western Europe and all points in between.  The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank formed concurrent to the OBOR has already begun financing some of the projects.

Improving the infrastructure of the countries on the Silk Road would inevitably improve the livelihood of the people in those countries. Xi observed, “It is meant to build not China’s own backyard garden but a garden shared by all countries.”

Xi stood firmly on the side of open trade and investment in the age of economic globalization. Repeatedly, he emphasized that it will be essential to seek win-win models of global growth, that all nations large or small, rich or poor must be treated equally with respect.

“The world will be a better place only when everyone is better off,” he said.

Because of conflicts and turmoil, a pandemic refugee crisis, climate change and terrorism, the world’s economy needs a new path for growth. Xi believes that path lies in technology innovation.

China is of course already a successful example of sustaining economic growth via technology innovation. Having in China the world’s largest network of high-speed rail and the longest open water bridges (nearly 100 miles long) are some of the indicators.

On its own, China has sent man into outer space, put a lander to roam the moon and built its own space station.

Just recently, China launched the world’s first ever quantum communications satellite.

China has developed its submersible technology such that they can now explore the ocean floor deeper than 4 miles below.

For six years in a row, China owns the world’s fastest super computer, leads in new applications for the mobile phone and new uses via the Internet. China’s economy is clearly no longer dependent on sweatshops. On the technology muscle beach, China is not the 97-pound weakling.

There is a fascinating and unconfirmed rumor circulating on China’s Internet that the US Navy withdrew from the South China Sea in July for a very practical reason.

Beijing government had quietly informed Pentagon that their missile firing submarines had their radar locked in on the American carriers and strongly suggested that the American fleet withdraw from the area.

The Pentagon asked the American fleet command for confirmation and the command was amazed to discover that indeed some radar had locked in on the carriers. However the American on-board finder could not locate where the locking radar was coming from. Thus they quietly hightailed out of the South China Sea.

If true, this incident is entirely consistent with China’s practice of Sun Zi’s Art of War, namely, the best way to win a battle is not having to fire a shot. A similar tactic was used nearly 20 years earlier.

Thomas Reed, an expert on nuclear weapons and former Secretary of Air Force, reported in September 2008 issue of Physics Today, that China in mid-1990’s had intentionally invited Danny Stillman of Los Alamos to tour China’s nuclear research facilities, which he did on numerous occasions.

Stillman was responsible for gathering intelligence on China’s nuclear weapon development capability and was the contact China wanted. Stillman got his book on China’s state of nuclear weapon technology ready for publication but the U.S. government quashed it.

At the time, the Clinton Administration was busy prosecuting Dr. Wen Ho Lee of Los Alamos alleging that he stole weapon related secrets for China. Publication of Stillman’s book would have been, at minimum, awkward. Stillman had to settle for telling the story to Reed later on.

President Obama as he headed to Hangzhou China for the G20 conference had planned on several one-on-one meetings on the sideline with other leaders, in addition to the high profile tea with President Xi.

Consistent with his mission as defender of human rights, he was planning to express his concerns to Philippines President Duterte over the thousands of extra-judicial executions of drug lords.

Upon hearing of Obama’s intention, Duterte flew into a rage saying among other things that Philippines is a sovereign nation and no longer a lap-dog of the U.S. He also asked rhetorically, what about the hundreds of thousands of civilians massacred by the Americans when they were the colonial masters of Philippines?

Duterte also called Obama the “son of a whore.”  Thanks to the Colbert Report, we now know that Duterte was not the first to use such indelicate language. Another exceptional U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, had called Gorbachev then leader of USSR the same name in his moments of extreme emotion.

Obama’s meeting with Turkey’s President Erdogan also did not go well. Erdogan in front of the foreign press aired his difference with Obama including naming a Kurdish group that the U.S. supports but Turkey considers a terrorist organization. (Of course, Asia Times has reported on numerous occasions that rebel groups fighting Syria’s Assad with U.S. support also fights for ISIS.)

Perhaps not wishing for another Duterte-like confrontation, and perhaps the price of offending Turkey would be too dear, Obama did not raise questions of human rights in Turkey with Erdogan—human rights issues such as crackdown of the press and the mass arrests that followed the unsuccessful coup.

Obama then proceeded to Laos to attend the ASEAN Summit. He was the first U.S. president to visit Laos and he formally apologized for the “secret” war America inflicted on Laos during the Vietnam conflict.

Reported elsewhere in Asia Times, Laos continues to suffer the aftermath consequences of carpet-bombing by the U.S. Air Force. Decades later there remain millions of unexploded cluster bombs in the countryside. These were accidentally detonated by unwitting farmers and their children with dismaying regularity.

Obama’s offer of $30 million per year for three years would barely scratch the surface for rendering Laos’ countryside safe for farming and allowing Laos to begin economic recovery.

Unlike hundreds of other nations, United States has never agreed to halt the use of landmines, antipersonnel and cluster bombs. The U.S. reserves the right to kill and maim and at the same time make obscene profits from it.

It’s no small irony that the great defender of human rights is also the dominant purveyor and user of these lethal takers of human life.  

The conscience salving donations to compensate for the past atrocities and human suffering is a drop in the bucket compared to the profits made on the victims’ bone piles. And as Christina Lin pointed out in Asia Times, the U.S. has made no efforts to stop the cycle of killing and profits, human rights be damned.

The distinction is clear. Xi Jinping offers cooperation and collaboration on a path for common prosperity. Obama offers umbrella of missile defense protection and a path to death and destruction.

Chinese Women Volleyball is Beautiful to Watch

On the last day of the Rio Olympics, China’s women volleyball team played Serbia for the gold. It was the most watched event in China as well over half of the TV sets in the country were tuned on the outcome.

When China won, it was the only gold of the three major team sports that China won from Rio, having fallen far short in basketball and football. Thus all of China was ready to fall in love with this sport all over again.

It was not easy. Chinese team qualified last in their pool play and had to face the top seed from the other pool. The top seed was Brazil, the defending Olympics champion of two previous Olympics in Beijing and London.

After beating Brazil in the fifth set, China had to face Netherlands, second seed and had beaten China in the preliminary play. After Netherlands, Serbia, China’s opponent in the gold medal round, had also beaten China in the preliminary round.

The United States team that beat Netherlands for the bronze medal had also beaten China in the pool play. U.S. was top seed after pool play but was upset by Serbia in the semifinal round. In other words, China was the underdog every step along the way.

Curiously, volleyball was least funded of the major Olympics teams in China. In fact one of the volleyball player complained about being poorly paid. “What we get as salary for a year is about what the basketball player gets in one game,” she said.

Coach Lang Ping was transformed from villain eight years ago to acclaimed hero of Rio Olympics. At the Beijing Olympics, Lang Ping coached the U.S. team that defeated China in the semifinal and went on a silver medal, losing to Brazil in the gold medal round.

Lang Ping, after leading China to the gold at the LA Olympics in 1984 as the MVP striker, left China to study sports management in the U.S. After graduation she became a coach for professional volleyball teams in the U.S., Japan and Italy.

Fans in China were unhappy with Lang for not coaching in China, not taking into account the lack of a level of compensation that would be competitive with the international market.

Lang was persuaded to return and accept the coaching role with the stipulation that she would run the team with total control and no interference from the sporting authorities and government officials.

Since taking over China’s national team in 2013, Lang has been the mother to the team. She even bought protein supplement from the U.S., out of her own pocket, to give to the players while in training to boost their nutritional in take and supplement an indifferent training table.

Her captain, Hui Ruoqi, had to miss several months of practice and workout as she underwent surgery to correct a heart condition. When Hui returned to the team, Lang monitored her conditions daily. Happily, Hui struck the match-ending kill for the gold.

When assembling the national team, Lang noticed that Zhu Ting was missing from the list of candidates. She had seen Zhu played previously and remembered her and asked about her.

Zhu had been relegated to second tier level for regional competition before Lang rescued her. At the Olympics, Zhu was voted the most valuable player, as was Lang in LA. In the just the gold medal round, the 6 foot four inch Zhu notched 25 kills against Serbia.

(By the way, Zhu was not the tallest player on the team. All except for the libero—the defensive specialist that spend a lot of time rolling on the floor digging for balls to keep them in play—were over six foot including 6-5 and 6-6. They must have gotten proper nutrition from somewhere.)

After Rio, Zhu will be going to Turkey to play professional ball. Coach Lang felt that Zhu, at age 21, needed to play at the highest international level to continue to improve. So she introduced Zhu to a team she knew and more importantly the Dutch coach that had Lang’s confidence.

China’s sports leadership has always measured Olympics success by the number of gold medals won. Many projected wins did not come through at Rio and they were bracing for a disappointed Olympics. Women’s volleyball saved the day.

How will China perform in 2020 Tokyo? This team is young and talented. As Xinhua News noted, the team members are vivacious and some are as beautiful as runway models. They are made to be sports ambassadors for China.

The key is whether Beijing will elevate the importance of volleyball to be closer to that of football and basketball and properly nurture the current and next generation of athletes.

Before the team arrived in Rio, a classmate of Lang and ardent volleyball fan sent her one million renminbi to subsidize the team expenses. Upon winning, the now successful businessman congratulated the team with another gift of five million yuan.

China’s sports authority can’t afford to depend on fans and donors popping up to the rescue.  Beijing needs to show the Super Mario of Tokyo (masquerading as prime minister) that Chinese women volleyball will continue to rule.

The Contradictions in Harry Wu

This piece first appeared in Asia Times. I wish to acknowledge the contributions of Professor Norman Matloff of UC Davis. In the '90s a group of us decided to pool our energy to debunk Wu, and Norman was the one to set up and maintain the website as repository of articles and op-ed pieces written about Wu that shed light on the dark side of this individual. This website has been a real blessing for me as I was preparing to write this concluding chapter of Wu's life.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to enjoy a long pee on someone's tombstone? Well, writing this piece comes close to that feeling.

When Harry Wu unexpectedly died while on vacation in Honduras, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave him quite a tribute. She said, “With his passing, the world has lost a global champion for freedom and democracy.” Well ahem, in light of more recent disclosures, may be not.

Recent reports, first in Foreign Policy (May 25) then in New York Times (August 14), described a morally corrupt person, not a knight in shining armor. Wu was accused of having absconded millions that did not belong to him and was to face charges of sexual misconduct in court. The heading from Foreign Policy said it all: “In death, a darker tale of extortion and sexual misconduct threatens to tarnish his legacy.”

These posthumous disclosures hardly surprised those of us in the Chinese American community that had been following his career. We always knew him to be a charlatan and a scoundrel.

But give Harry Wu credit for being a trailblazer. He discovered that he could make a nice living by saying nasty things about China. Sometimes his statements were believable because they were based on facts skillfully doctored or exaggerated. Other times, he simply made them up as he went; the more lurid he made it, the more compelling he became. The western media could not get enough of his stuff and members of Congress were the most ardent members of his fan club.

From a middling salary of a non-profit, Wu came into his financial windfall in 2007 when families of two Chinese plaintiffs sued Yahoo for illegally providing information to the Beijing authorities that led to their arrest and imprisonment. (Illegal that is from a US perspective.) At the House Foreign Affairs Committee public hearing, then chairman Tom Lantos castigated Yahoo as a bunch of moral pygmies. Wu was invited to the hearing as an interpreter for the plaintiffs.

The cowed company agreed to give $3.2 million to each of the two plaintiffs and $17.3 million to a human rights fund as aid for future Chinese dissidents. The fund was to be administered by Harry Wu and his Laogai Research Foundation. That was a big, big mistake.

Yahoo’s donation became Wu’s personal fortune

The plaintiffs had to sue Wu later in order to get some of that $3.2 million awarded to them. Other dissidents never did see any of the $17 million. Instead the tax returns for LRF showed revenues of $325k in 2006, which jumped to more than $18 million in 2007.

In 2008, Wu bought a building in Washington DC for slightly under $3 million to house his museum. In the museum were prominent displays of photos of Wu with the who’s who of the world including Margaret Thatcher of UK and Bill Clinton and China bashing members of Congress such as Nancy Pelosi, Chris Smith and Frank Wolf.

Wu was supposed to disburse $1 million per year as aid to dissidents but according to Morton Sklar, attorney for the plaintiffs, Wu never did. Sklar said to New York Times, “But Harry Wu saw the money as his own personal fund, to benefit his own activities.”

Jeff Fiedler, who helped Wu formed the LRF in 1992 and should know Wu better than anyone, left the board in 2011. He said, “Harry was uncooperative and saw the money as his alone. He became extremely unreasonable.”

Wu died while vacationing in Honduras and cause of death has not been publicly disclosed. Perhaps he would still be alive today if he did not come into all that “discretionary” funds for exotic vacations. Rather than speculating on what might have been, I have been following his career and would like to discuss the person that he became. How he lived his life can serve as a cautionary tale.

First an important disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the accuracy of anything I say about Wu that are drawn from his public utterances. The reason is because consistency in his public statements was never his strong suit. I stand behind everything else in this piece.

How did Wu ended up in China’s prison?

Just the explanation of how Wu ended up in China’s labor camp would be reflective of his carelessness with facts. At different occasions, Wu gave different answers. Sometimes he said he was persecuted because his father was a banker and therefore Wu had the wrong family background. But then he was asked why the government would allowed him to graduate from college in 1959 and did not send him to labor reform during the height of the anti-rightest movement between 1957 to 1959?

Oh then, may be it was because he voiced criticism of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolt. But that timing did not work either since the failed revolt also took place in 1956.

Another version which Wu had sneeringly referred to as the official Beijing line was that after graduation, Wu was assigned to a government job that would make use of his training in geology. He was caught taking money from a co-worker’s purse and that was how he made his first visit to China’s prison.

According to his own autobiography, Wu was in various prison camps from 1960 to 1979. If so, Wu would have been among the first batch to be released and allowed to return to civilian life as Deng Xiaoping returned to power and China began its reform.

In 1985, Wu came to the U.S. He claimed to have accepted an invitation to UC Berkeley as a visiting scholar; it was a curious invitation that came without any stipend. He frequently made proud reference to the fact that he came to America with just $40 in his pocket. I could not find anyone at Berkeley that would admit to having invited Wu.

As an alternate explanation, Wu had a sister living in San Francisco and it was possible that she sponsored his immigrating to the US. Less glamorous than being a visiting scholar but it would explain why Wu was allowed to remain in the America as a permanent resident. He and his sister hadn’t seen each other for 30 years and quickly found that they couldn’t stand each other’s company. He soon left her home and found work at a donut shop in Oakland.

Wu discovered his calling

Somehow the next year Wu was invited to speak about his prison experiences in China before a group of students at UC Santa Cruz. He gave an emotionally charged presentation that impressed the audience and thus Wu unwittingly found his life long calling. No more making donuts, he could just talk about his experiences in China’s prison system.

Ramon Myers, curator of East Asian Studies at Hoover Institution on Stanford heard about Wu and met with him. Myers wanted to know more about China’s prison system and gave Wu a small research grant to pursue a study. More importantly, Myers gave Wu access to the archives at Hoover. Long after the research grant had petered out, Wu continued to brandish his affiliation as a Hoover Research Fellow, a business card and title that conveyed priceless legitimacy on to Wu.

Then in 1991, Wu met Jeff Fiedler who was at the time secretary-treasurer of AFL-CIO Food and Allied Services Trade Department. I was not there but I would guess that it was mutual admiration at first sight. Okay, that might be too strong a description but each had something the other wanted.

Fiedler had a personal mandate which was to disrupt trade with China in any way he could. His logic was flawed but simple. Namely, low cost goods made in China took away jobs from American labor force. Wu could provide the ammunition Fiedler needed and Wu craved the cover of legitimacy that big organized labor could offer.

Laogai foundation founded by AFL-CIO

They founded Laogai Research Foundation to be based in Washington DC. “Laogai” was Chinese terminology for reform through labor and was the term used in China for a particular kind of prison camps. “Research,” I am sure, was Wu’s contribution having learned the bona fides that came with that word. For the early years, the so-called Washington headquarter of the foundation consisted of an extension with an answering machine in Fiedler’s department located in the AFL-CIO building.

To continue to burnish his credentials, it was necessary for Wu to gather research material by making field trips into China. His highest profile visit was to take Ed Bradley into China for a piece on 60 Minutes allegedly to expose prison made goods from China. He apparently did the same with BBC.

By the time Wu was ready to make another clandestine visit to China in 1995, he was a known and wanted person by China’s public security. He tried to enter China’s Xinjiang by way of Kazakhstan and was caught at the border entry. A female companion from AFL-CIO was detained with him.

It was hard to understand why Wu brought along a Caucasian woman at a remote border crossing if he wanted to keep a low profile and avoid detection, but it turned out to be a stroke of luck for him. The Chinese authorities had no reason to keep the woman in detention and released her within days. She then told the world that Harry Wu had been arrested.

The timing of Wu’s arrest was also fortunate for him. The International Women’s conference was to be held in Beijing later in the summer and first lady Hillary Clinton was to be the keynote speaker. Washington’s position was that without Wu’s release, there would be no first lady going to Beijing. Without that negotiation, Wu could have been facing another 19 years in China’s prison. He had become an American citizen a year earlier, so you could say he was three times lucky.

Wu became a world celebrity

Wu came back to the U.S. a world famous celebrity. Going under cover to China was no longer an option nor necessary; Wu became a popular speaker on the circuit. He appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and was interviewed by Charlie Rose and spoke at schools and universities and of course testified before various sub-committees of Congress. (Anytime Congressman Chris Smith wanted to go on C-Span, he would call Wu in for a conversation.) His remarks became increasingly lurid and graphic and his anti-China position more extreme.

Shortly after his release from China, Wu joined the picket line at Boeing in Seattle. He was quoted by the local newspaper as saying, “The strike by Boeing members (of the machinist union) is really a strike against the Chinese government; a strike the American labor movement must win.” At the time the union accused Boeing of exporting jobs to China because Boeing agreed to subcontract manufacturing of certain sections of the 737 to China. (In retrospect, Boeing would not have made a fortune in airplane sales to China without the subcontract agreement.)

He led protesters before K-Mart stores claiming that most of the merchandise inside was made by prison labor in China. Cheap goods from China made by prison labor became an important high profile issue for Wu. To disrupt bilateral trade with China, Wu went around the country claiming that practically everything made in China came from the prisons. This was in the era before Apple introduced iPods made by Taiwanese contractors in China, and Wu could get away with extravagant claims before a poorly informed American public.

In 1998, James Seymour and Richard Anderson published a scholarly study of China’s laogai penal system, “New Ghosts, Old Ghosts.” The book was widely acclaimed for its objectivity and dispassionate analysis.

Their findings disagreed with Wu’s wildly disparate estimates of the number of prison camps in China and the number of prisoners. They estimated that China prison labor could not have contributed more than one-tenth of one percent to China’s GDP. The real difference was that theirs was a rigorous study based on accepted academic practices; Wu would not have known what that meant.

Wu took on the World Bank

In 1996, Wu led the protest against the World Bank for financing an irrigation project in Xinjiang. Wu charged that the project would benefit the laogai camps in Xinjiang. He found out that a Fan Shidong had been recently released from a Xinjiang laogai and was living in Hong Kong.

Wu flew to Hong Kong to meet him and offered to pay all his expenses if Fan would agree to testify before Congress against the World Bank project. Fan refused saying that the irrigation project would benefit the local Uighurs and had nothing to do with the prison camps. Fan later revealed his encounter with Wu to the ethnic press after he immigrated to the U.S.

As Wu basked in international recognition including Nobel Peace prize nominations and spoke in the European circuit as well as in the U.S., those that knew him intimately became increasingly disenchanted with his actions.

By late 1996, Ramon Myers, who made Wu a “Hoover scholar,” said to LA Times, “We do our work in a very fair, objective way. It doesn’t help us any when Harry Wu is affiliated with us and he’s peddling his stuff in every parliament in the world. I regret, frankly, that he was ever at Hoover.”

Chinese American community disenchanted with Wu

On one occasion Wu visited Columbia University to speak and receive some sort of recognition. While lining up for some refreshments, he was delighted to meet Li Qiang, a student at Columbia, who was originally from Shanghai. Wu said he was homesick for the opportunity to speak in their local dialect. Li took the opportunity to point out to Wu that contrary to his public remarks, China’s human rights conditions had never been better in the last 50 years. Wu said, “Yes, yes but the Americans know nothing. Let’s just talk between us.”

Even as Wu became more facile with his English speaking ability, he missed the fellowship of speaking to compatriots of his homeland. Ironically, the Chinese American community was increasingly outraged by his public remarks and activities. One of his best-known publicity stunts was to use a secretly taken video of an operating room in China performing an open-heart surgery and claiming that the video was documenting the process of harvesting of kidneys from prisoners.

Ignatius Ding, a leader of a democracy in China movement in Silicon Valley, spontaneously organized in response to the visceral TV images of June 4 in Tiananmen, was an early supporter of Harry Wu. By the end of 1996, he offered a rueful observation to the LA Times that Wu had no supporters from his own ethnic Chinese community, just members of Congress. Later I asked Ding why he made that comment. He said, “I support the cause of helping the Chinese dissidents but I cannot condone Wu’s methodology. He pushed the envelope way too far.”

It was not much later that Wu sold his home in Milpitas and moved to the DC area. Thus he left the largest community of Chinese Americans in the U.S. that shunned him to be near the Congressional community that adored him.

After Wu’s death, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Florida who succeeded the late Tom Lantos wrote a eulogy on Harry Wu, “After a hearing on Yahoo’s collusion with Beijing in suppressing Internet freedom, Harry stepped in on behalf of those who had been imprisoned and their families.” She apparently was not aware of the charges that Harry stepped in not for anyone but his own pockets.

The tragedy of Harry Wu was that he didn’t just soak up all the funds that could have benefitted dissident families in financial distress; he also sucked up the oxygen from with other dissidents. His distortions and exaggerations corrupted the very issues that the dissidents wanted to raise against the Beijing regime. The truths that could have stood on their own merits and let the society decide were no longer possible as they were covered by the slime from Harry Wu.

Three birds of a feather

There are others that have made a career out of Harry Wu school of China bashing. Two comes to my mind. Gordon G. Chang wrote about “The Coming Collapse of China” in 2001. A decade later, China’s economy was on verge of quadrupling, surely not a sign of collapse? Undaunted, Chang boldly affirmed that he was merely off in his prediction and confidently predicted that the collapse will most certainly take place in 2012.

It is now 2016 and his fellow traveler, Peter Navarro came to Chang’s rescue. Navarro also affirmed that Chang’s prediction was just around the corner, except he was smart enough not to say when, thus leaving room to review the collapse question every ten years or so. It’s no coincidence that Navarro was also the person that produced the video tribute to Harry Wu’s life posted on the LRF website. Three birds of a feather flock together?

Featherweight credentials notwithstanding, their anti-China messages continue to find a willingly receptive audience, and they will continue to be interviewed by the media and invited to testify before Congress. And we Americans will continue to suffer from the endless charade (and parade) of charlatans.