Word: lu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fine sentiment. But even those who take the Party at face value know how difficult it can be to get local governments to follow Beijing's lead. China does have enlightened laws on the books, but often they are ignored. Activists like Lu seek to ensure the laws are obeyed. "We're seeing a real grassroots movement organized around local abuses, and that's never happened in China's 25 years of reform," says Robin Munro of the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, a workers' rights group. Campaigners are working in the one area where China has true democracy...
...Lu Banglie was once a hero in Beijing. A 34-year-old farmer from the rice-basket province of Hubei, he was praised last year by the Communist Party-owned China Youth Daily for leading a movement to impeach a village chief who residents say was corrupt. The paper told Lu's tale: launching a five-day hunger strike, getting roughed up by thugs and investigating political conditions in other villages across China. When his campaign finally forced his village chief to resign in 2003, the paper said, Lu emerged as "the front runner of peasant grassroots democracy...
...That was then. Last week, Lu was beaten unconscious in the Pearl River Delta town of Taishi, where? accompanied by a journalist from the Guardian, a British newspaper?he had gone to help residents impeach their own village chief. "Three hundred meters from the village headquarters, we were stopped by men on motorcycles and the car was suddenly surrounded by many people," Lu told TIME last week, speaking in a safe house in Wuhan. "They recognized me and said 'That's the one!' I guess they'd been shown my picture. They opened the door and dragged...
...Lu says he has now been branded a "black hand" by provincial party officials?the epithet used for labor leaders of the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. His fall from favor underscores the frictions that accompany China's uneven efforts to modernize. While the country has progressed economically, its authoritarian government has not made the same progress in building open and accessible political and legal institutions. Concerned about a rise in mass protests, Beijing continues to promise change. An annual meeting of the party's Central Committee last week concluded with calls for "social harmony" and a commitment to "ruling...
...rays ("A colonoscope of Ana Belén? It's yours. Plates of Julio Iglesias' prostate? You'll have 'em.") Reig's gumshoe has an unusual specialty: finding fictional characters who take on a life of their own, a hazard any novelist would recognize. That's what brings Luís María Peñuelas, a writer of popular westerns, into Clot's office seeking help. Mabel Martínez, heroine of Penuelas' latest work in progress, has escaped from the pages, Roger Rabbit-style, in apparent despair over her creator's inability to advance the story. Other...