China, the world's fastest-growing economy, is fragile and undergoing more than just "teething problems", according to a panel of international experts.
Internet censorship and control, the lack of reliable information from the Chinese regime, an artificial economy, and ongoing human rights violations were discussed at a forum held on the eve of the APEC's ministerial meetings in Sydney Wednesday.
International human rights lawyer Canadian David Matas, co-author of a report on state-sanctioned organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China said he has had a great deal of difficulty getting information out of China.
He and former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour were denied visas to China despite formal application and a meeting with Chinese Embassy officials in Canada.
However, Matas said he believed the wide variety of evidence they gathered confirmed the allegations for their initial July, 2006 report and revised report released January, 2007 were true.
"We believe that there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners."
The exact numbers of transplants being carried out in China and the source of the organs for these operations were extremely difficult to determine because there is little openness or transparency within the regime, Matas said.
"There is no real, official, meaningful government statistics for either. The government doesn't publish at all the numbers of executed prisoners."
Matas said he and Kilgour "came to grips" with the lack of transparency by looking at trends rather than numbers.
"We looked at trends – executed prisoners were steady but the number of transplants went way up when the persecution of Falun Gong began."
"There were huge gaps between the volumes of transplants and volumes of prisoners sentenced to death. And one of the explanations – indeed the only one that's been proffered for filling this gap is the organs from Falun Gong practitioners."
Kilgour and Matas estimated there were 41,500 organs "unaccounted for" following investigations.
Added to this were many testimonials from Falun Gong practitioners who, during incarceration in China, had been systematically blood tested and tissue-typed – not for health reasons asserts Matas, as the practitioners were being tortured.
China's "Economic Bubble"
Research fellow at the Australia National University Elliot Fan said China is in an economic bubble and their "growth rate is not reliable".
"Everybody can observe some growth in China over the past 20-30 years, we just don't know how much because we can't trust the figures from the Chinese government."
He said one of the major threats to the economy is the government itself.
"Over 30 percent of the labour force is employed in state-owned enterprises. This is a major problem because the government can widely and deeply influence private economy."
The commercialisation of authority was also of great concern, Fan said, as it has led to punishment as a commercial enterprise through such practices as using forced labour camps in manufacturing – compounded by widespread corruption.
Fan said non-performing loans had reached 50 percent in recent times and this combined with other concerns paints a bleak picture for China's economic future.
"[The future] crucially depends on political reform...China's economy should be considered as a risky economic entity."
China's Great Firewall
Erping Zhang, Harvard scholar and Executive Director of the Association for Asian Research (USA) spoke of "China's great firewall".
Zhang said mobile phone companies are now required to retain SMS messages after 30 days so the Chinese regime can track down who is "passing on rumours".
In China there are 520 million mobile phone users with SMS capabilities.
Internet users are on the rise with 123 million users (9.4 percent of population) at an estimated increase of 10-15 percent a year. Students make up 36 percent of Internet use, Zhang said.
A sophisticated project launched in 2002, called the 'Golden Shield Project' includes tight control over Internet and mobile communications, he said.
According to Zhang, there are only three "gateways" for information to pass in and out of China.
"Essentially the Chinese internet is an intranet right now."
There are 30,000 – 50,000 cyber cops to run and monitor the Internet, he said, and over 300 Internet companies operating in China have signed so-called "voluntary censorship" agreements with the regime.
"Essentially they are helping China to block the so-called sensitive information."
Access points are blocked, and ISP blocks are in place, Zhang said.
A Harvard-Cambridge report listed The Epoch Times editorial series, 'Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party' and 'Falun Gong' as the top two on a list of "sensitive terms".
The use of anti-censorship software, such as Open Net Initiative, is on the rise and will bring the firewall down when it reaches a critical point, Zhang said.
"If 25 percent of Chinese users are able to reach the overseas Internet the firewall system will be effectively brought down. We estimate that 5 to 10 percent of people, especially students, in China are using this anti-censorship technology."
Human Rights and Economics
Political scientist at New Zealand's Canterbury University Wang Juntao warned that, "Western democracies must tie human rights demands to economic dealings with China or gradually lose their democratic freedoms."
He said Chinese people tend to confuse their country with their government, especially once they repatriate to other countries.
Beijing 2008 v Berlin 1936
Former Canadian MP David Kilgour also spoke about the necessity of the Western world to talk frankly of an Olympic boycott. He related Beijing 2008 to the 1936 Berlin Olympics but stressed a major difference in the world's awareness of each situation.
"The government[s] said 'we didn't know what the [Nazi] government had in mind in 1936'", Kilgour said.
"We do know overwhelmingly what the government of China has in mind for the Falun Gong community which was 70-100 million strong in China in 1999 and it's now in 70 countries."
"Naming and shaming the government of China over it's role in organ seizures, Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere offers the best hope to save civilian lives - mostly because of the Olympic games providing a fulcrum.
"To succeed the campaign must be creative and focused. It must take every advantage of every means of electronic communications," he said.
Kilgour said the task was "daunting" but "fully achievable" and encouraged the audience to take action.
Two witnesses also recited their harrowing torture experiences in detention centres in China, for refusing to renounce their belief in the spiritual practice Falun Gong.
The forum 'Balancing the Scales With China' was organised by the "Free China" group and held at Parliament House, Sydney.
It was reported that Chinese officials tried to shut down the event.
Feeds