China Aid

Taking a page from the "million hoodies" campaign in honor of shooting victim Trayvon Martin, China Aid created this show of support for Chen Guangcheng, who is blind, with hundreds of people donning sunglasses.

Updated at 9:13 a.m. ET: After the dramatic nighttime escape of Chen Guangcheng from house arrest in his Chinese village, one of the first people to know that the blind lawyer was safe in Beijing was thousands of miles away — in Midland, Texas.

Pastor Bob Fu, 44, says he knew of Chen’s escape three days before the security guards surrounding the house discovered it. He says he was among the first to receive and post a 15-minute video of Chen, made in hiding, appealing to Chinese President Wen Jiabao to bring to justice the local officials who illegally imprisoned him and his family for months. Fu says he also had a hand in preparing U.S. officials for Chen’s escape and arrival at the U.S. Embassy, while also helping lay the groundwork for alternatives, the details of which he says he cannot divulge.

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Fu knows China’s security apparatus from personal experience. He made his own escape from China, arriving in the United States as a refugee with his wife and newborn son 16 years ago.

Now, through his Midland-based nonprofit China Aid, Fu is one of the leading voices on behalf of religious freedom in China, connected with activists in his home country and respected on Capitol Hill.

"Bob Fu is one of the most credible people you’ll ever find about what is going on in China," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Human Rights Subcommittee within the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "He’s very well connected and knows people inside of China who are the agents of reform — people like Chen who (take action) because they want a better China."

According to tax documents, China Aid has raised several million dollars to fund legal counsel for "house church Christians," financial support for the families of jailed dissidents and publicity for human rights cases in China. In extreme cases, China Aid has helped fund "logistics" for an underground railway, Fu says.

In China, worship is allowed only in state-sanctioned churches, mosques and synagogues. Evangelizing outside those sites and worshipping in independent churches, often called "house churches," is prohibited.

China censors 'Shawshank' as Clinton heads to Beijing amid dissident drama

Fu’s activism goes back to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, when he led a group of fellow students from Liaocheng University in Shandong province to join the massive rallies in the capital. After the crackdown on demonstrators he was one of many student activists required to attend special political study sessions and write self-criticism day after day. He worried that he would be forced to leave his hard-won position at the university.

During this time, Fu said, he read a book given to him by American missionaries who were teaching English in China. It was the story of a famous Chinese intellectual who was addicted to opium in the early 1900s, but was able to shake the drug after he converted to Christianity.

"I was really, really struck by the story," Fu said, in an interview with msnbc.com. "I came to the realization if you want to change China, the first thing you need to do is change people’s hearts. And if you want to change other people’s hearts, you first you have to change yourself."

Jerry Huang / AP

Bob Fu of the Texas-based rights group China Aid in Midland, Texas on Monday.

Fu and his wife, Heidi Cai, began holding underground worship services and Bible studies, he said. At the same time, he was teaching English at the Communist Party School in Beijing.

"I was God’s double-agent," he said, chuckling.

In 1996, they were arrested and held in jail for two months, and then placed under house arrest, Fu said. Then they received word that they soon would be jailed again, he said, in the “sweep” that preceded China’s Oct. 10 National Day.

By this time, Fu’s wife was pregnant with their first child, he said, but without the necessary permission from the government, which controls when a woman is allowed to have her one child. If she had been found out, she would be forced to have an abortion, Fu said.

So in the dark of night, Fu escaped through a second-story bathroom window and Cai left in disguise, he said. They fled to the countryside, Fu said, where they were protected by "house church brothers and sisters."

Fu said that with the shelter of this network, the help of a Christian policeman and travel documents obtained by a highly placed businessman, they were able to join a tour that went to Thailand and then Hong Kong, which was still under British control. Just three days before the territory was transferred to Chinese sovereignty, Fu and his wife were give refugee status, and flew to the United States.

NBC sources: Blind activist is under US protection

Fu and Cai lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he started China Aid in his garage while attending Westminster Theological Seminary. They later moved to Midland, Texas, where they are raising their three children.

What prompted Fu to set up China Aid was a 2002 crackdown on a group of Christians in a house church in Hubei province that led to many arrests, among them five people who were sentenced to death, he said.

Fu and a group of contacts in the Christian, dissident and exile communities started publicizing the case and raising money, he said. Ultimately, Fu said, they used the funds to pay for 58 lawyers to defend the accused. They contacted the media, making the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

"That year, all the five death sentences were overturned," Fu said. "It was a major legal victory, and even the 'evil cult' charge was removed."

A group of activists who came of age as he did during the Tiananmen movement, are now human rights lawyers, many of them Christian, he said. Fu said he taps into this network, and links them to Washington by picking up the phone.

'Little ants'
Fu compares himself and fellow human rights activists to "little ants" forcing "one case after another into courts, moving around and mobilizing and going through all the technical procedures" in place under China’s laws, but often not observed or even taken seriously by officials. 

"We want to move the pile of dirt with 1 million ants," he said.

"I had never envisioned or wanted to establish (a nonprofit) like this," he said, but now that China Aid is nearly 10 years old, Fu is gratified by some success. "We can help the persecuted, and we did advance rule of law," he said.

China Aid is doggedly following and publicizing many human rights cases around China, Fu said.

"You can write to imprisoned Christians to encourage them and to let them know that you are praying for them," through China Aid, the website says.

Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Fu’s group also prints and distributes Bibles in China.

For Fu, the escape of Chen was a major triumph, but it also has generated new concerns — for the wife and daughter of Chen, and for those who helped get Chen to safety.

In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, Fu calls out the bravery of one such supporter, He "Pearl" Peirong, who drove Chen the 300 miles to Beijing after he escaped over a compound wall in Shandong.

"I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape. Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen because he is such a 'pure-hearted courageous person'," Fu wrote. "I was talking to her last week when she said 'guobao laile,'— that state security had arrived."

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Courtesy Rebel Pepper

A cartoon mocking Christian Bale's confrontation with Chinese security was posted on Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, on Friday.

BEIJING – Just days after Christian Bale made a red carpet appearance in Beijing for the premiere of his blockbuster new movie, “The Flowers of War,” about the 1937 Japanese sacking of Nanking, he made even bigger headlines in China off-screen on Friday.

Bale invited CNN’s Beijing bureau crew to accompany him Thursday as he attempted to visit Chen Guangcheng, an activist who has been under house arrest since his release from a four-year-long jail sentence last year.

The 40-year-old Chen, a blind self-taught lawyer became a persecuted dissident after he filed a lawsuit in 2006 on behalf of residents of his hometown, Linyi, over the city’s practice of forced abortions and sterilizations, a municipal policy that runs counter to national regulations.

He was thrown in prison on what human rights activists say were trumped-up charges of “intentional damage of public property” and “gathering people to block traffic.”

Related link: Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Since Chen’s release in September 2010, dozens of Chinese and foreign reporters, as well as supporters, have gone to Dongshigu village, in Shandong Province, to try to visit him, but all have blocked from even entering the town. Some were even violently manhandled and beaten up by unidentified thugs, and some TV crews had their equipment damaged or confiscated.

Bale was no exception.  

He and the crew were stopped at a road checkpoint when government security guards wearing green army coats asked what they were doing and punched the camera. When Bale took out his flip camera to record, he was punched and shoved, exactly the same treatment the CNN crew received just a few months earlier when they tried to visit.

After the scuffle, the crew got back into their vehicle and drove off, but they were followed by a security van for about 40 minutes.

"I'm not brave doing this," Bale said on camera. "The local people who are standing up to the authorities, who are visiting Chen and his family and getting beaten or detained, I want to support them."

In a later interview on CNN, Bale said, “It’s amazing a superpower like China is actually terrified of this man. It shows such an intrinsic weakness within the fabric of the country.”

China's human rights detainees 2010

He also stressed that he did not inform any members of the movie crew in order not to implicate them with his own actions.

‘Pandaman vs. Batman!’
Bale’s confrontation with the security guards soon made headlines on Twitter and Weibo, China’s most popular Twitter-like, but government-controlled, social media forum. Posts about the encounter spread rapidly on Friday morning with some joking headlines like “Pandaman vs. Batman!”

Andy Wong / AP

English actor Christian Bale speaks to journalists on the red carpet as he arrives for the debut of the Zhang Yimou-directed movie.

The cartoonist known as “Rebel Pepper” who posted the Pandaman vs. Batman cartoon on Weibo said he was somewhat surprised that Bale was treated exactly the same as everyone else.

“Dongshigu village is the only place in China that everyone is treated the same [and roughed up] no matter where you are from,” Rebel Pepper said during a phone interview with NBC News.

Some cynics noted it could be a publicity stunt for Bale's new movie, but most expressed their respect and appreciation.

A Weibo user named Shenan wrote, “You could pretend not to see or hear. That blind man is not your relative or friend in a faraway foreign country. Even if the whole 1.3 billion people were jailed, it’s not your business. You really didn’t have to ask for the roughing up, Batman.” 

By Friday afternoon, Weibo administrators censored all the posts related to Bale’s attempted visit. Steven Jiang, the CNN producer who was with Bale, found all his Weibo posts on their journey could not be forwarded.

It is a common practice for social media censors to jump in and try to put out the fire online before the flames get out of control. But determined Weibo users still spread the news with puns or pictures too difficult to censor. 

A post on Weibo joked that Zhang’s movie “Flowers of the War," would be pulled from Chinese cinemas. But another user said, “No, the movie will be there, only all the parts Christian Bale is in will be deleted!”

Bale left China today for the U.S., but Chen still remains off-limit to all his visitors.

Christian Bale scuffles with Chinese guards

AFP - Getty Images

An undated cellphone picture shows thousands of residents of Wukan village in China's Guangdong province carrying a banner saying "Wukan's people were treated unjustly" during a protest of alleged illegal land seizures.

BEIJING– For years, in the name of social harmony, China’s ruling Communist Party has been highly successful in masking, placating or simply distorting the tens of thousands of protests – dubbed “mass demonstrations” – that occur here ever year.

The Wukan rebellion will prove a tougher dilemma for Beijing to solve.

From The Telegraph newspaper’s Malcolm Moore comes details of the stunning story of Wukan, a fishing village of 20,000 in China’s southern Guangdong Province.  Earlier this week, the entire town rose up and threw out local party officials and police forces following years of having the people’s land sold out from underneath them.

The villagers’ frustration mixed with anger over news that one of the protest organizers, Xue Jinbo, died in police custody, allegedly from a heart attack.  Since the start of the revolt in September, Wukan residents have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by the police to re-enter the town by creating roadblocks out of fallen trees or just using themselves.

They are now in a tense standoff with security forces, which earlier formed a cordon around Wukan--although a villager inside the perimeter told NBC News earlier today by phone that the cordon has been removed, leaving one checkpoint blocking the central access into the town.

Scores of state security officers are said to be still positioned around the edge of Wukan, which has begun seven days of mourning for the fallen protest leader.

Moore also reports that the town has enough food to last ten more days and that the security cordon is in fact still in effect (Click here to read more on how Malcolm Moore slipped through the security cordon).

That we know anything about this explosive story – which has been months in the making but appears to be coming to a head this week – is largely due to Moore, who earlier successfully slipped through the security cordon and since has been filing articles and Tweets on events occurring within Wukan.  (Follow him on twitter: @MalcolmMoore)

The reports have given everyone a rare inside look at the mindset and mechanics of a popular uprising in China--a rarity for foreign journalists who often face tight, sometimes arbitrary restrictions, and harassment by local government forces when trying to report on issues deemed sensitive.

Slipping through China’s security
To say that foreign journalists in China know a thing or two about security cordons is an understatement.

Over the years, the security apparatus has become exceptionally good at quickly sealing off and containing problem areas while at the same time wallpapering over dissent with state media coverage.

In 2008, during the spring Tibetan uprisings, NBC attempted multiple times to enter the Tibetan areas of Sichuan Province for coverage but was turned back by security forces that had formed roadblocks around the region to prevent independent reporters and observers from entering.

Similar restrictions have continued this year.  Journalists have attempted to enter those areas again following a wave of self-immolations by Tibetans that has called renewed attention to the plight of China’s Tibetan minority.

Most recently, local government officials in the Shandong town of Linyi have effectively bottled up local dissent by keeping blind lawyer and social activist, Chen Guangcheng, under perpetual house arrest.

Supporters of Chen – who in 2006 famously filed a lawsuit on behalf of his fellow residents against the local government over its practice of forced abortions and sterilizations – and foreign journalists have attempted many times this year to visit the activist and his family.  But they’ve been met at the town’s edge by plain-clothed security agents who forcibly restrict visitors from entering by throwing rocks and swinging sticks.

It was only in the last week – under intense public pressure – that the provincial government of Shandong intervened, permitting ulcer medicine to be brought to Chen.

Peter Parks / AFP - Getty Images

Armed police in riot gear stand at a roadblock en route to Wukan on Wednesday. Residents of the village, which was surrounded by police after protests over the death in custody of a community, leader vowed to continue their fight for land rights.

Will other Chinese dominos fall?
The dramatic chain of events in Wukan begs the obvious question, could this be the proverbial “first domino” that falls in a wave of similar copycat protests nationwide?  As Moore stresses in his coverage of the rebellion, the people of Wukan are counting on the central government to come to the rescue and depose the corrupt local officials whom they believe responsible for their current plight.

That hope has manifested itself in the numerous rumors, as Moore reports, swirling around the village.  The most recent is that China’s state news channel, CCTV, is coming later this week to cover the standoff.  Some of the villagers have concluded amongst themselves that national coverage of their plight will lead to swift action by China’s ruling party against the corrupt Wukan government.

How the central government manages Wukan’s revolt against party authority is a source of intense speculation.  Its action will generate strong responses both nationally and abroad and will reveal to China watchers which audience the party wishes to anger less.

On one hand, Beijing could do as Wukan’s villagers wish and come down hard on the local officials, reaffirming the Communist Party’s often-repeated mantra of “serving the people.”  This path, however, could have the unintended consequence of convincing local governments throughout the mainland that Beijing is willing to sell out its own in order to preserve social harmony, potentially forming a rift between local and central government apparatuses.

On the other hand, Beijing could determine that preservation of Party rule is the single most important priority and elect to crush the rebellion through force or the threat of it.  Such a tack would instantly draw international condemnation, but as China has shown in the past international opinion plays a very distant second to its interest in preserving national stability.

A dark horse in changing that thinking is the ever-evolving Chinese blogosphere, which increasingly has filled the role as national zeitgeist.  Ironically, even as state censors work overtime to scrub the web of news and discussion of socially delicate issues like Wukan, decision-makers here increasingly must account for public reaction on these matters and factor potential online anger in the complex calculus that is governing.

Where China will fall on this matter remains to be seen, but the next few days will tell us a lot about how Beijing plans to handle mass disturbances in the near future.

NBC News producer Bo Gu contributed to this report.

BEIJING—A year ago today, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a writer and activist imprisoned in a northeastern Chinese prison.

Today he remains in jail for the crime of “inciting subversion of state power,” serving out an 11-year sentence.

His wife, Liu Xia, remains under unofficial house arrest in Beijing for no crime.

A slender 51-year old poet and photographer, Liu has been cut off from the rest of the world ever since it was announced her husband would be given the prize.  She has no phone or Internet access, is under constant police watch, receives the rare visit from family members, and seldom is able to venture out.

“Liu Xia…leads a lonely and oppressed life," the wife  of another dissident was quoted as saying in a profile of Liu. 

NBC News interviewed Liu Xia in September 2010, just days before her husband won the Nobel Peace Prize.  She was skeptical that the Nobel committee would award Xiaobo the prize.  She described his mood as being good and his outlook as optimistic.  She remembered having premonitions when she read his manifesto for political reform--Charter 08--knowing he would go to prison for writing it.  She talked about the possibility of traveling to Prague for an exhibition of her photographs.

She appeared composed, bright, and alert.

But that time seems a world away today.  Liu has not been seen or heard in public since.

Her treatment is, sadly, not unique.

The Chinese government has taken a hard line against dissenting voices.  Another example widely cited is Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer and activist who has been beaten several times and had his property destroyed or confiscated.  His wife and daughter have also been subjected to unofficial house arrest.

Again, neither the wife nor daughter are guilty of any crime.  Yet, as one commentator in China observed this week, “[T]he Chinese government are detaining a six-year old girl.”