Word: chen
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China's dream 2008 Olympics in Beijing have one potential nightmare: Taiwan. And the bogeyman is the island's outgoing president Chen Shui-bian, with his vision of a state separate and independent of the mainland, which claims the territory as an inseparable part of China. Any hint that Taiwan may declare itself a nation on its own - neither part of China nor Chinese - have elicited bellicose threats of military intervention from Beijing in the past. That has been enough to keep populist sentiment in Taiwan sober-minded about separatism. But Chen may have found a new way to insinuate...
President Chen has proposed a referendum to be held alongside Taiwan's presidential election in March. It would ask the people whether Taiwan should apply to join the United Nations under the name "Taiwan." After Beijing took over Taiwan's U.N. seat in 1971, the island has failed in its attempt to re-enter the body under its formal national title of "Republic of China." Chen says he doesn't want to compete with China for representation, but to find a global voice for Taiwan's 23 million people. Any application to the U.N. by Taiwan would have no chance...
...hard to find examples of questionable legal outcomes like the case of the Zhuangtouying four. The plight of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, who was given a four-year sentence on charges of inciting public disorder last year after he exposed the forced sterilization of women as part of a provincial family-planning campaign, is one example regularly cited by activists. New York-based Human Rights Watch and others say they have recorded numerous instances of individuals who protested court decisions being beaten, tortured, imprisoned and even killed as local officials sought to bury controversial or embarrassing cases...
...Still, several times a month, women like Yang and Wang Xiuqin, whose son Chen Guoqing is also imprisoned for the taxi murder, visit the main petition office in a run-down neighborhood near the Beijing South train station. Yang says she has no choice. "Of course we still come. Our children are innocent. How could we not come?" In December 2005, fed up with the lack of response, four relatives bypassed the petition office and marched straight to the red gates of Zhongnanhai, the Communist Party headquarters. Fu Yuru, mother of He Guoqiang, who is serving a suspended death sentence...
...paring down his style ever since, in Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall and Spring Again and the near-wordless 3-Iron. His new film is more conventional, not so rewarding. Yeon (the actress Zia) switches her affection from her faithless husband to a condemned killer (Taiwanese star Chang Chen) who keeps trying to commit suicide. Both, the movie says, are doomed, but to Yeon life is made precious by her devotion to the condemned man. It's one of those stories with a predictable arc, and this one requires a more imaginative treatment than Kim has managed to summon...