Story of Women’s Labor Camp Abuse Unnerves Even China

BEIJING â€" In September 2011, 62-year-old Wang Guilan walked out of the Masanjiao re-education-through-labor camp in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, with a rolled-up diary, written on waterproof material, hidden in her vagina. Guards had searched her before she left but had missed the document, by a fellow inmate called Liu Hua, recounting the torture taking place in the camp on a daily basis.

“After getting out, Ms. Wang broke into a cold sweat,” wrote Yuan Ling, an investigative journalist with Lens Magazine, a monthly Chinese magazine of photography, news and culture.

Published last week, the story has shocked even people here long familiar with tales of maltreatment, even torture, within the sprawling, police-run, camp system that exists outside the judicial system and has as many as 190,000 inmates at any one time, as my colleague Andrew Jacobs wrote. Exact figures are not available.

The article caused a sensation in China, with major and minor media seizing on it and reporting it - before censorship struck, shortly after publication, in the form of a directive issued on Tuesday by state propaganda authorities to stop all republication and reporting, according to the United States-based China Digital Times, a media site. (The site is supported by the Counter-Power Lab out of the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, it says.)

In response, the Liaoning provincial government has set up an investigation team, according to multiple Chinese media reports.

No longer available online on the Lens Web site, this link here will take you to what the U.S. web site says is a version of the original Chinese-language story.

But one article in particular appears to have thumbed its nose at the censorship edict. Written by the China Women’s Newspaper, a publication of the All-China Women’s Federation, a Communist Party organization, it interviews the reporter who wrote the story, a man called Yuan Ling.

Traditional and new methods of torture were routine in the camp, said Mr. Yuan, adding that it isn’t just Masanjiao where this was happening. Mr. Yuan said he had met women from other camps, including in northern Heilongjiang province, who had identical tales.

What was happening inside the walls of the camps

Physical punishment was common and women could be crippled by it, he said. For infractions of all kinds, including the long working hours - labor camps oblige inmates to labor, as their name suggests, at a profit to the camp management, the police and the state - these were three favorites:

“Hanging Up High” meant a woman was suspended by her stretched-out arms from a high place.

“Tiger Bench” meant she was seated up on a bench, tied around her waist, as bricks were inserted under her legs, putting unbearable strain on her legs and knees.

“Dead Person’s Bed” meant she was tied, four limbs spread, to a bed, and left there, often gagged. There might or might not be a hole through which she could defecate.

Beating, hogtying and other methods of punishment were widespread, as my colleague Andrew reported.

Mr. Yuan said he had spent five years meeting and interviewing victims. Some had been put into the camps for offenses such as theft; many were there for petitioning for justice over other, unrelated, cases.

But it was only last year, as signs grew that the state may reform the highly unpopular system, that he thought he might have a chance to see it published.

Details of the proposed reforms remain vague. At his first news conference after taking office last month, the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, when asked for details, said only that the government was working on it and may have a road map in place by the end of the year.

At the National People’s Congress last month, some delegates issued strong calls for the system to be abolished or reformed, I reported then.

What did Mr. Yuan want to see change, asked the China Women’s Newspaper

“Petitioning and reform-through-labor are filled with problems,” said Mr. Yuan. “Behind them is the issue that the legal system is not sound.”

Many here would agree with that. Then Mr. Yuan said something with far-reaching implications for society: even if China is slowly moving away from the abuses of the system of extra-judicial punishment, rooted in the Mao Zedong era, it’s not enough, he said. What China needs is truth-telling.

“We’re at a turning point,” he said.

“On any issue that moves forward by reforming, we must tell the truth,” he said. “It’s not enough to say that we’re going to cover up what happened yesterday and move on to tomorrow. The women’s injuries still exist. Only by telling the truth can we sum up experience, and facing that, we can break away from yesterday and welcome the future,” he said.

At the time of writing, there was no information available about the investigation being carried out by Liaoning officials, who are believed to include representatives of the government, the police and the Party. We’ll update you if and when there are.

Thatcher as Theater: A Prime Minister Playwrights Couldn’t Resist

LONDONâ€"Margaret Thatcher didn’t have much time for one of Britain’s defining qualities - its abundance of theater - but theater people certainly had plenty of time for her. If only antagonistically.

That’s to say that while the former prime minister, who died Monday, famously incurred the wrath of the likes of Peter Hall, the former artistic director of the National Theatre and a fierce proponent of the very principles of state subsidy for the arts that Mrs. Thatcher was against, her personality - and politics - were catnip to dramatists then and even now.

When I first moved to London from New York in the 1980s, critiques of Thatcherism seemed to be de rigueur for playwrights who had almost nothing else in common. (Think David Hare and Alan Ayckbourn, for example.) And when her leadership came to an end, you could almost hear the sighs of relief, but tinged with something approaching disappointment: Who was the cultural community going to kick around in her stead

With that in mind, what follows is a crib sheet to five seminal British plays (one is a musical and another a joint entry) that would never have come to fruition without Mrs. Thatcher and her zeitgeist to act as a call to dramatic arms.

And now that she is gone Britain’s only female prime minister walks among us onstage still: Two of these works are very much still running.

1. “Top Girls” (1982)/”Serious Money” (1987)

Two plays from one (supreme) playwright, Caryl Churchill, a Leftist mainstay of the Royal Court Theatre, where both these works were first seen, five years apart. “Top Girls” doesn’t directly concern the political “top girl” - no, make that “iron lady” - of the time, but its moral compass owes everything to a climate that saw Mrs. Thatcher come to power without necessarily easing the way for women to follow her. Its final word, “frightening,” tells playgoers all they need know about the author’s point of view.

“Serious Money,” in turn, takes a savage moral scalpel to the galloping financial excesses of the age as made possible, the play makes plain, by Thatcher-era economics. Intended as a satire, Max Stafford-Clark’s original production was lapped up by the very constituency that the writing lampooned. There were reports at the time of patrons setting 20 pound notes alight at the intermission in glee. Why Well, because they could.

2. “A Small Family Business” (1987)

It’s hard to imagine a less placard-waving dramatist than Alan Ayckbourn, whose extraordinary output (more plays, at 77, than he is years old, 74 this week), tends to focus on suburban English families in psychic disarray. But the author, who directed the National Theatre debut of this large-scale 1987 play, sends Thatcherism coursing through his depiction here of a community seen to be ceaselessly on the make. Bitterly comic and as often as not just bitter, the play sustains interest today as an attack on a society in merciless thrall to materialism; Ayckbourn being Ayckbourn, it’s also fiendishly entertaining, as well.

3. “The Secret Rapture” (1988)

David Hare’s play transferred (unsuccessfully) to Broadway, was filmed, and has been revived on the West End, but it is most fondly remembered from its dazzling National Theatre premiere in 1988, starring Penelope Wilton, Clare Higgins, and the late Jill Baker and directed by Howard Davies (who later went on to do the film).

Never shy about stating his longstanding antipathy to Thatcher, Mr. Hare here found a stand-in of sorts for the country’s leader in the character of the fearlessly pragmatic Marion French, a politician in the ascendant who is given to lines like, “God, how I hate all this human stuff.” Sound like anyone we knew

4. “Billy Elliot the Musical” (2005)

Placards actually do get waved in this British stage musical adaptation of the much-lauded Stephen Daldry/Lee Hall film, which sets the artistic yearnings of the young ballet dancer of the title against the backdrop of the miners’ strikes that seared Britain in the mid-1980s.

Thatcher, in turn, features in a second-act ensemble number written by Mr. Hall and the show’s composer, Elton John, that looks forward to each day as being that much nearer to the death of the union-busting politician who lost the miners their jobs. At Monday night’s performance of the ongoing West End production at the Victoria Palace Theatre, a vote was taken to see whether the audience would like the number on that night to be kept in or taken out.

By an overwhelming majority, they opted to keep the song, and the show, as is.

5. “The Audience” (2013)

Peter Morgan’s Broadway-bound play about Queen Elizabeth II’s weekly audiences with her various prime ministers across her six-decade reign saves the duologue with Thatcher for well into the second act. That might be because the creative team wanted to build to a climax - or maybe it’s because that encounter is in fact the weakest of a lineup of British leaders that, in theatrical terms at least, is stolen by Richard McCabe’s funny and wounding portrayal of the comparatively little-known Harold Wilson.

Mr. Morgan’s show, too, was performed unchanged on Monday, though rewrites are being mooted for next season’s Broadway run. The Thatcher stuff, in my view, is ripest for tweaking, even though, when it comes to closing the book on Thatcher herself, the narrative of her legacy is far from written out.

IHT Quick Read: April 10

NEWS As North Korea warned foreigners on Tuesday that they might want to leave South Korea because the peninsula was on the brink of nuclear war â€" a statement that analysts dismissed as hyperbole â€" the American commander in the Pacific expressed worries that the North’s young leader, Kim Jong-un, might not have left himself an easy exit to reduce tensions. Choe Sang-hun reports from Seoul, and David E. Sanger from Washington.

While a horse meat scandal recently alarmed Europe, another one has erupted in Spain â€" the increasing slaughter of horses that people either do not want or cannot afford. Raphael Minder reports from Chapineria, Spain.

A handful of Taliban emissaries flew into Qatar on an American plane in 2010 to discuss negotiating a peace deal that could stabilize Afghanistan and allow the United States a graceful exit. But peace talks broke down, and three years after their secret arrival, the Taliban officials remain idle and their political office in Doha remains unused. Rod Nordland reports from Doha.

The grandly named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is virtually a one-man band, run by Rami Abdul Rahman from a drab industrial city in Britain. Neil MacFarquhar reports from Coventry, England.

Malaysia on Wednesday scheduled national elections for May 5, setting the stage for the biggest test of the ruling party’s dominance since the country gained independence from Britain more than five decades ago. Gerry Mullany reports.

The Italians are the most prudent people in Europe. Spaniards and Greeks are not as badly off as their homelands’ dismal economic statistics would suggest. And pity the Germans. They are poorer than the Cypriots they are helping to bail out. These were the results of a survey of European household debt and wealth â€" but a caveat is in order. Jack Ewing reports from Frankfurt.

In World War II, Japan produced the feared Mitsubishi Zero fighter planes. Today, the same company is working on a regional jet that it hopes will propel it into the industry’s big leagues. Hiroko Tabuchi reports from Tokyo.

Joaquín Almunia, the European competition commissioner, differs from his predecessors in how comfortable he is in personally reaching out to executives across the table â€" or the ocean â€" to negotiate settlements. James Kanter reports from Brussels.

ARTS Pacha, a decades-old dance club on the Spanish island of Ibiza, is part of a hedonistic night-life world in which the center of gravity is shifting to places like Las Vegas. Alexei Barrionuevo and Ben Sisario report.

Liao Yiwu, a Chinese poet and storyteller, has a new book, “For a Song and a Hundred Songs,” about his four years of beatings, torture, hunger and humiliation as a political prisoner. Elaine Sciolino writes from Brussels.

A judge in Paris has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on the issue of whether an auction there of Hopi Indian artifacts, viewed as sacred by the tribe, can go forward as planned on Friday. Tom Mashberg reports.

SPORTS Eight years after his last title at Augusta, Tiger Woods is back atop the list of likely champions at the Masters golf championship. Christopher Clarey reports.

Auction House Is Poised to Sell Art in China

Christie’s Is Poised to Auction Art in China

Dale De La Rey/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images

“Fly,” a painting by Zeng Fanzhi, sold for $5.1 million last May at Christie’s in Hong Kong.

SHANGHAI â€" Christie’s auction house said Tuesday it had been granted a license that would enable it to become the first international auction house to operate independently in China, which has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest art and auction market.

Christie's China Debut Close Video See More Videos »

Detail of “Red Sprig,” a work by Yang Jiechang to be shown at Christie’s in Hong Kong.

The move allows Christie’s to sell directly to buyers from a growing class of wealthy collectors in China, many of whom have been spending vast sums of money in recent years on fine art, wine, watches, jewelry and other items at auctions around the world.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s have been operating in Hong Kong for several decades and have seen their business explode in the city, which is governed separately.

But the world’s two biggest auction houses have long sought greater access to mainland China to cultivate collectors, hold auctions and compete with China’s own formidable auction houses, Beijing Poly International and China Guardian, entities that have recently moved into the ranks of the world’s biggest auction houses.

Last year Sotheby’s formed a joint venture in Beijing with the state-owned Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group to hold auctions in China. Sotheby’s is the 80 percent owner of that enterprise.

Now Christie’s has signed its own agreement with the City of Shanghai and plans to hold its first auction this fall, although the company said the agreement restricted it from dealing in “cultural relics.” The company can operate throughout China but will be based in Shanghai and pay taxes there.

In a statement Steven P. Murphy, Christie’s chief executive, emphasized how important China is to the auction house’s future.

“In recent years we have seen phenomenal developments take place in the global art market, particularly in China, where the market has grown at an unprecedented rate,” he said. “Today’s announcement further solidifies Christie’s position and commitment in a market which possesses a strong heritage and deep appreciation of art.”

Last year revenue in China’s auction market was estimated at more than $4 billion, down sharply from $9 billion in 2011, when the market was blistering hot. Auction revenue in the United States market was estimated at more than $3 billion in 2012.

But China’s homegrown auction houses have been troubled by fakes, smuggling and longstanding suspicions of price manipulation.

Analysts say Sotheby’s and Christie’s hope to capture a share of the market and compete by pledging higher standards for authenticating and evaluating art and other collectibles.

Sotheby’s joint venture plans to hold an auction in China this year, a spokesman said. It has also begun talks with the organizers of the European Fine Art Fair about holding a similar fair in Beijing.

Christie’s said in a statement that the number of clients from mainland China that now bid at its auctions in various cities was twice what it was in 2008.

“Now Christie’s will be able to engage with our clients in Shanghai in the same way that we have done over many years in London, Paris, New York and Hong Kong,” Mr. Murphy said.

Officials at that auction house, founded in 1766, said the application for the license was filed last year and was approved on March 28.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the auction house China Guardian is a state-run business. It is privately owned.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 10, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Christie’s Is Poised to Auction Art in China.