Chinese Consulate

Thousands of Tibetans marched through New Delhi and New York, shouting slogans and waving flags in protest against China's actions in Tibet, at the start of the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics. In India, about 10,000 Tibetans, including maroon-robed Buddhist monks and women in traditional costumes, asked China to prove that it was upholding the rights of people living in Tibet. In New York, about 1,000 protesters marched in Manhattan to the Chinese Consulate.

The rain had washed away his daughter's smile by the time George Shi reached the parking lot. Gently, he glued a new flier over the old one, smoothing each crease, until her photo and his message again shone clear: REWARD: $200,000 to anyone who helps find her killer. It is all Shi can do, nearly two years after his daughter, Donglei Shi , was strangled and her body dumped in an Alhambra park, leaving behind a case with no witnesses and little evidence. Donglei, also known as Kyral, was Shi's only daughter, the older of two children.

Seeing the televised excerpts of demonstrations at the various Communist Chinese embassies and consulates throughout the United States, I noticed that the demonstrators appear to be almost exclusively people of Chinese descent. This disturbs me. Although the fight for freedom in Communist China is primarily the responsibility of the Chinese people, it is a fight that should be actively supported by all people who cherish freedom. Personally, I believe that if freedom-loving Chinese citizens are willing to take a bullet in the back at Tian An Men Square, the least I can do is demonstrate in support of their cause in front of the Chinese consulate on a safe street in Los Angeles.

After languishing for more than two months in prison without formal charges, China's most famous dissident artist was abruptly released on bail late Wednesday. The official New China News Agency reported that Ai had been freed "because of his good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from. " The 54-year-old artist is reported to suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure, although he was not known to be seriously ill. More likely the release was a belated response by Chinese authorities to the international reproach that followed Ai's arrest April 3 at the Beijing airport.

Hundreds of Chinese students burned effigies of Chinese leaders Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping in Chicago and marched in New York and in Lansing, Mich., on Sunday in continuing shows of support for their pro-democracy colleagues back home. "We wish to boost their morale," said Tony Tam, a 31-year-old native of Hong Kong and a student at the University of Chicago. About 1,500 people, most of them Chinese students, demonstrated in Chicago, and about 1,200 marched to the Chinese Consulate in New York.

After languishing for more than two months in prison without formal charges, China's most famous dissident artist was abruptly released on bail late Wednesday. The official New China News Agency reported that Ai had been freed "because of his good attitude in confessing his crimes as well as a chronic disease he suffers from. " The 54-year-old artist is reported to suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure, although he was not known to be seriously ill. More likely the release was a belated response by Chinese authorities to the international reproach that followed Ai's arrest April 3 at the Beijing airport.

The rain had washed away his daughter's smile by the time George Shi reached the parking lot. Gently, he glued a new flier over the old one, smoothing each crease, until her photo and his message again shone clear: REWARD: $200,000 to anyone who helps find her killer. It is all Shi can do, nearly two years after his daughter, Donglei Shi , was strangled and her body dumped in an Alhambra park, leaving behind a case with no witnesses and little evidence. Donglei, also known as Kyral, was Shi's only daughter, the older of two children.

Amid chants and tears, hundreds of thousands of shocked and angry supporters of China's pro-democracy movement rallied Sunday in Hong Kong, New York, Washington and San Francisco to condemn the use of military force in Beijing that crushed student protesters with a warlike violence. The bloodshed also sparked denunciations from Western and Communist countries alike. The biggest show of support took place in Hong Kong, where more than 200,000 people staged a protest march, waving black banners--some of which said "Down with the killer warlords!"

Two Chinese diplomats who announced Saturday night that they were defecting to the United States have not yet decided whether to seek political asylum but will be allowed to stay in this country for at least a year, federal authorities said Monday. The diplomats, Zhou Liming, 26, vice consul for cultural affairs, and Zhang Limin, 25, a staff member, both attached to the Chinese Consulate here, met with Immigration and Naturalization Service officials and are staying at an undisclosed location.

In one of the largest demonstrations of its kind in Los Angeles, more than a thousand people marched in summer-like heat to the Chinese Consulate on Sunday to protest the continuing suppression of pro-democracy students in China. Besides its size, what made this march different from past demonstrations was evidence that the protest is becoming a broad-based community movement, leaders said. The pre-march rally at MacArthur Park resembled a political convention, with brightly colored signs announcing the presence of such diverse groups as the San Fernando Valley Chinese Cultural Assn.

For years, the boxy office building housing the Chinese Consulate on Shatto Place in Koreatown maintained a low profile. Its only major brush with the news came nearly two decades ago after the Tiananmen crackdown prompted Chinese Americans to hold protests there. But after this month's deadly Sichuan earthquake, the consulate has emerged as an unlikely galvanizing force for Southern California's thriving ethnic Chinese community.

For several hours Saturday afternoon, the most curious sight at the corner of Hollywood and Highland wasn't the man dressed as Barney the purple dinosaur or the dueling religious proselytizers, but the swarm of Beijing Olympic Games supporters waving flags, passing out helium-filled balloons and singing patriotic Chinese songs. Accompanied by three inflatable Olympic mascots -- known as the Fuwa -- the crowd chanted slogans such as "Welcome to Beijing" and "No politics" as they marched along several blocks of Hollywood Boulevard past the usual street scene of clowns, celebrity impersonators and tourists.

Thousands of Tibetans marched through New Delhi and New York, shouting slogans and waving flags in protest against China's actions in Tibet, at the start of the one-year countdown to the Beijing Olympics. In India, about 10,000 Tibetans, including maroon-robed Buddhist monks and women in traditional costumes, asked China to prove that it was upholding the rights of people living in Tibet. In New York, about 1,000 protesters marched in Manhattan to the Chinese Consulate.

The attack on the World Trade Center in New York was, indeed, an attack on a center of the world. Hundreds of foreigners are reported to be among the victims of Tuesday's assault on Manhattan's twin towers. Their families share directly in the U.S. grief, and their governments have embraced the tragedy as their own. Side by side with global U.S. banks and stockbrokers, prominent European and Asian firms occupied the prime New York real estate: Germany's Deutsche Bank, France's Credit Agricole and Japan's Fuji and Asahi banks.

About 40 members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement gathered in front of the Chinese Consulate Friday to protest a member's incarceration in Beijing. Teng Chunyan, 37, is on trial on charges of "gathering intelligence for an overseas organization." Several other members of the movement, which has been banned in China since July 1999, have been detained there.

Hundreds of Taiwan supporters demonstrated in front of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles on Wednesday, demanding an immediate end to China's bombing rehearsals near the island nation. Chanting "China, hands off Taiwan!" and "China, Asia's Iraq!"

Two more diplomats attached to the Chinese Consulate here may be considering asking for political asylum because they don't want to inform on Chinese students, according to a report in today's editions of the San Francisco Chronicle. The pair, a husband and wife who work in the consulate's education section, are staying with friends in the Bay Area, despite being due back in Beijing this week, the paper reported. Quoting sources close to the couple, who were not identified, the paper said the diplomats had been expected to inform on Chinese exchange students protesting here over the June 4 massacre of demonstrators in Tian An Men Square.

A husband and wife who disappeared from the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco last week contacted the FBI for help Wednesday, apparently to decide whether they will seek political asylum, sources close to the couple said. The couple, identified by friends as Cheng Huiming and Feng Jie, are the second set of diplomats to leave the consulate in recent days over the Chinese government crackdown on student protesters June 3-4. They worked in the consulate's education section and are said to be hiding with students in the Bay Area.

A Chinese diplomat and the consul chef have left the Chinese Consulate here in a move that further cools an already chilly reception for a delegation of Chinese officials that arrived Tuesday. The two consular staff members have not contacted U.S. immigration officials, but plan to seek residency in this country, according to several sources who have been active in protests against the Chinese crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents. "They were both near the end of their terms.

Officials at the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles said Tuesday they had information suggesting that representatives of the government of Taiwan were paying Chinese students $100 each to participate in anti-Communist demonstrations in the city. The assertion was strongly denied by officials at the Coordination Council for North American Affairs, which represents Taiwan here, and termed "almost funny" and "bizarre" by local Chinese-Americans familiar with the students who have marched in local rallies in recent weeks.