A Chinese reporter's sad reflections on the Beijing airport bomb incident

http://english.caixin.com/2013-07-22/100559173.html

Why a Reporter Feels Sympathy for an Airport Bomber
Siding with a man who commits a terrifying act is normal when you hear so many stories of people so wronged they lack the will to live

By staff reporter Luo Jieqi

These past few years as a reporter, I have met some people with nothing left to live for and now another person can be added to the list. Ji Zhongxing, the disabled man who set off a bomb in a Beijing airport on July 20, is that person.
Ji and I are the same age. We were both born in 1979. Last night, when I read his story, I was grabbed by a strange feeling.
In 2005, we were both 26 years old. He was in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, on his motorcycle in the middle of the night illegally looking for passengers. He was working hard to earn a living, hoping one day to marry and have children. I was also in Guangdong, but I had already found a relationship. I fought with my parents about it and was too stubborn to give in, so I eloped to Beijing to be with my boyfriend.
In 2005, Ji's life was destroyed. He was disabled, he says, when security guards in Dongguan beat him savagely. He could no longer marry or have children. For him, tragedy was a way of life; for me, tragedy was what I wrote about for work.
On July 21, around 1 a.m., I left Beijing Jishuitan Hospital and took a taxi home. This was several hours after Ji detonated his bomb. Before that, he shouted and asked people in the airport to stay away from.  The explosion injured just one person: Ji.
I had just seen Ji lying on a gurney, being taken into the operating room. I expected that Ji to leave surgery screaming, but he did not. He was lying there very calmly. I saw the thick eyebrows on his gaunt face.
Doctors had just finished amputating his left hand at the wrist. "His left palm was blown to bits," the surgeon said.
Ji once told his story on a blog. He says that on June 28, 2005, before dawn, he was giving people rides in Dongguan when a security guard beat him. Ji was left paralyzed. He tried to get justice through courts and petitions to the government, but this did not work. He went back to his hometown in Shandong Province, and his elderly father took care of him.
After the explosion at the airport, a picture of Ji from 2005 circulated online. In it, he is naked, his lower body covered with infected wounds.
How strange, after an explosion, to feel sympathy for the bomber. I think what he did was terrifying. My first reaction was that he did not mean to hurt anyone; he meant to take revenge.
Sitting in a taxi, under the wide Beijing night sky, I thought back to two other people I have interviewed who had nothing left to live for.
The Miner
His name was Li Aiping. I remember clearly. Every time I think about him, I ask myself: Is he still alive?
In 2009, I went to Wuhan Steel to investigate a lead pollution problem in the central province of Hubei. A man over 70 years old followed me the whole time. He could not speak Mandarin, so we communicated little.
After I finished my investigation, he led me into a villager's house. The room was impossibly dilapidated, with nothing in it. In one corner, a man was lying on a filthy blanket.
Later, I wrote his story in a blog post. "I saw a miner who had been injured ten years ago. I didn't know there would be a man lying in that empty room. I walked in and suddenly saw a man with long hair lying under a quilt … He told me to come in and after he found out I was a reporter, he told me about his life, a life he had long dreamed of ending. He struggled painfully to get up, so he could show me his spine and his legs, which had already lost all sensation.
I didn't have time to close my eyes, so I had to take in the whole terrifying scene.
Afterward, this stranger started sobbing. Half lying on his bed, he lifted himself up to bow. I jumped up to stop him, thinking that if he bent his back, he would be in even more pain. This man was trying to bow even though two steel rods were supporting his spine!
I don't know if it was to comfort him or myself, but I took a picture of the yellow, wrinkled verdict document he received from the court. I didn't know, aside from taking that picture, what I could do for him."
This man was paralyzed in a mining accident, but the mine owner refused to give him any compensation. The miner won his lawsuit, but the court was unable to enforce its verdict. He had no way of getting compensation. So he asked his wife to carry him to the court and the mine owner's house, to let his pitiful body speak for itself. As in many other tragic cases in China, the miner's attempt to defend his rights failed.     
In order to survive, the man sacrificed his dignity and let his wife marry another man who could provide for him. Adding to the tragedy, his wife's second husband died a few years later in another mining accident.
When I arrived, he had already been paralyzed for ten years. He still hadn't given in to despair, though, and he still thought the media could help him. After I left Hunan, he often sent me text messages. His language was extremely polite. You could tell he was educated.
Every time I got a text from him, my feelings about it were endlessly complicated. I used to think that if I could get in touch with a lawyer in Hunan, maybe he could help get the verdict enforced. I thought that I should find one of my old friends, who could get in touch with an important member of the Hunan court system and ask him why the verdict had never been enforced.
But I always thought of some reason I should not get involved. "It's already been ten years. Am I really going to turn this case around all by myself? Besides, I would still have to go ask other people and persuade them to sympathize with Li too."
Later, Li Aiping texted me less and less. I practically breathed a sigh of relief. But tonight, I am thinking about him again. Four more years have passed. Are those ruined, wounded legs any better? Is he still alive?
If he had been the airport bomber or if it had been any other person I'd interviewed, I would have to shoulder more of the blame. For instance, what if it had been that mother?
The Mother
When this woman's daughter was just over five years old she was raped at knifepoint by an old man at her school. The thug was imprisoned, but just over a year later he was released early.
The girl's mother was not satisfied. She sued the school, but lost her lawsuit. The school retaliated. She had three children at home, but after the lawsuit they could not go to school in the area.
The little girl grew up. Her little brother and sister neared the age when they should start school. Every day they watched their parents with eager eyes, eager to attend school. But the girl said to her brother and sister: "You two don't want to go to school or learn to read. There are bad people at school and the bad people will chase after you with knives."
In 2009, when I was doing interviews in Hunan Province, this mother brought her daughter to meet me. I felt awful, but again I did not know how I could help. After all, even if I went through her appeal materials, if I investigated and verified the old rape case, if I wrote an article revisiting this old news, would it really help her?
Over the past few days I have interviewed Tang Hui, a Hunan mother who made national news by petitioning on behalf of her daughter, who was forced into prostitution. Tang was wrongfully sent to a labor camp. She won her case and received state compensation. Talking with Tang, I thought back to this other mother. Four years ago, she wanted to come to Beijing so I could take her to the Ministry of Education to petition. I told her that every day a great many people come to the capital to air their grievances with the central government. Her petition would only be one more drop in the bucket. Ultimately, nothing would happen. Her child was so young and the petition would ruin her whole family's future.
Later, I wrote a blog post about her called "The Common People's Misery." When the blog post came out, all it did was relieve my guilt. It did not do anything for that wretched family.
Only after I became a mother did I understand that a woman's child is her whole life. When a child feels humiliation or pain, her mother feels it more.
I told Tang Hui that I admire her sense of reason because if I had been in her position I would have considered throwing bombs. I would never have been able to persevere for six years, using only reason to stand up for my rights. Despair and hate can twist a person's mind. She replied that as a woman and a mother, she could not rely on her own strength to kill all the evil people she hates. She might kill one, but then she would not have a chance to kill the second. She could only go through the courts.
Yes, the courts should be the last line of defense for justice.
"Where have all the reporters run off to?"
After the airport explosion, a respected lawyer posed a question on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter. He wondered where all the reporters had run off to when Ji was beaten so badly he was paralyzed. Now that he has set off a bomb in the Beijing airport, the reporters are swarming all over him.
My conscience has been asking me the same question. If Ji had found me at the time, would I have told his story? The story's chances of being chosen in a news pitch meeting would have been very small because it would not have been influential enough. It's too common today. I remember a sentence from a news textbook: "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog" is news. Ji's experience was a dog-bites-man story.
Today, "man bites dog" news has become common. Tragedies happen every day. A reporter can only write stories that her editor will agree to publish, and different media outlets have different standards. This state of affairs is also a way of relieving our guilty consciences.
The media is not so big and strong. There's a hand over our throat. Reporters have to race against official restrictions. Sometimes before our voices can be heard, the news has been drowned out. That's just the way things are. The state's information mechanisms are closed off. The dark side of a story is often hidden away. Certain people always figure out some way to prevent media supervision. They are unbelievably shameless.
I know from experience as a reporter that these people will never sacrifice their way of life for some idealistic sense of justice. I admit that I, too, am weak. I do not have the energy to spend my life struggling for justice.
My uncle is all alone and over 70 years old. His house has been demolished and he has not received a cent of compensation, so now he's destitute and homeless. When I was on maternity leave, I represented him in a lawsuit. We lost twice. Still, I would not let this old man petition. I thought that pursuing the state's empty promise of a right to petition was just a dead end.
I realized that when public rights are unfairly denied, it is too easy for a person in despair to fall back on private help. When I was in court, in front of the defendant, I wanted to use every bit of strength I had to slap him across the face. But unexpectedly, I stayed rational. I smacked the table instead.
The village elders all asked me: "Aren't you a reporter? Why don't you tell people what's going on here?"

This was my answer: "These years, because of rampant demolitions, so many people have burned themselves to death or been crushed to death or jumped off buildings. Who's going to care about my uncle's story?"
After a man set a bus on fire in Xiamen in June, I interviewed Wu Boxin, an expert in criminal psychology from the Public Security University. He said that individual terrorists are often people with nothing left to live for.
"These people were not innately criminal. Most of them were originally workers or peasants. Our political system was founded on the power of the workers and peasants. How can we abandon them now?"

Child servants of Nepal

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fplan-international.org%2Fabout-plan%2Fresources%2Fnews%2Fplan-welcomes-nepal-governments-move-to-abolish-kamalari-practice&h=yAQFZ0PkzAQH0o7vQlL4HaNu81CaybuvcSW95ZnH3gisXaQ&s=1

Amartya Sen on China and India

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/prospect-interviews-amartya-sen-the-full-transcript-jonathan-derbyshire/#.Ue0XBuDHPa7

excerpt:

"The choice those Asian economies made [to extend healthcare, education etc] wasn’t a democratic choice, but it was a very smart choice. You can be smart without being democratic.  However, good practice of democracy – well informed and vigorous – can help to select smart governments, humane governments, and can make those qualities be less fragile and transitory. For this the quality and force of media discussion are important.  But if you are lucky enough to  have a friendly authoritarian government, they can take  smart decisions without having to rely on forceful media discussion. That’s what they did in South Korea and in Taiwan.  But North Korea did not.  Nor did Cambodia in the 1970s.  Democracy can help to make the choice of government not a matter of luck, but of conscious and reasoned public choice.  For this to be ensured the opportunities offered by democracy have to be strongly seized.  This is where India’s record is divided – excellent use in some areas and very slack use in others.  We have to make democratic practice more comprehensive.

Over the decades China has presented examples of good and smart as well as weak and confused authoritarian rule.  The gigantic famines of 1958-61 resulted from terrible policy choices that could not be changed for three years despite tens of millions dying each year- no political party could criticize the terrible policies, and newspapers could not even cover the bad news.  But after that, despite many other problems, China did remarkably fast progress in education and healthcare for all – an example of good authoritarianism.  But they were irrationally prejudiced about the use of markets, which they shunned until the reforms of 1979.  With the reforms there were some smart moves (with marketization China did brilliantly in manufacturing and agriculture) but also a big mistake when they marketised health insurance, so you had to buy health insurance rather than being insured by the state or the commune; the Chinese were not alert to the terrible consequences of marketizing everything. The percentage of health coverage went down after 1979 from 100 per cent to 10 or 12 per cent, with downward effects on the high pace of China’s progress in life expectancy.  Again, it took them many years to recognise that they had made a mistake, and went about un-doing the harm, a correction that became full speed only in 2004 – a quarter century after the error of marketizing health insurance in 1979.  Now they have nearly a hundred percent coverage – and with much better quality health care thanks to China’s economic prosperity.

An authoritarian system, if it is intelligently and humanely led (but there is no guarantee of that), can get its way quickly. A democratic system is somewhat slower, because you have to convince everyone. In the case of India, the question is which issues get dramatised and politicised. Famine was instantly politicised, because it is so central to the Indian view of the British Raj. The Raj began with a famine [in 1769] and ended with a famine [in 1943].  The elimination of famines was an immediate success of democratic India.  There have been other successes, particularly when there have been crises – with HIV, for example – when there has been a real sense of urgency, which the media discussion and democratic pressure reflected. Five or ten years ago, people were saying that India was going to have more cases of HIV than anywhere else in the world – not only as an absolute number, but as a proportion. But it hasn’t happened. That challenge was met and things were done to reduce the vulnerability of the population.  These challenges received public attention and advocacy, and a democratic success followed."

News on China's "New Silk Road" trans-national railway, very interesting

From today's paper:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/global/hauling-new-treasure-along-the-silk-road.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

—Jaimie

China studies in India -- opinion essay

http://www.epw.in/commentary/there-need-china-studies-india.html?ip_login_no_cache=784e7ca9337975e48c72338af702d917

Is There a Need for China Studies in India?
We need to understand China in a more complex, globalised, and intrinsically connected world, not only because of security concerns, but also due to issues such as the economy, the environment, and the scarcity of resources. Against the backdrop of the recent policy document entitled "Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century", this article argues that there is little interest within the Indian government, the leading think tanks, or the private sector in developing China studies in India at present.

Tansen Sen (Tansen.Sen@baruch.cuny.edu) is with the Department of History, Baruch College, City University of New York.

We need to understand China in a more complex, globalised, and intrinsically connected world, not only because of security concerns, but also due to issues such as the economy, the environment, and the scarcity of resources. Against the backdrop of the recent policy document entitled “Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century”, this article argues that there is little interest within the Indian government, the leading think tanks, or the private sector in developing China studies in India at present.

A recent policy document entitled “Nonalignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the Twenty First Century” released by the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research remarked that,

China will, for the foreseeable future, remain a significant foreign policy and security challenge for India. It is the one major power, which impinges directly on India’s geopolitical space. As its economic and military capabilities expand, its power differential with India is likely to widen.

The document goes on to recommend various ways in which India should respond to possible territorial and economic conflicts with China.

Leaving aside the soundness of the predictions and the policy recommendations on dealing with China outlined in the document, I was confounded by two issues when reading it. First, I did not see names of any China scholars from India involved in drafting the report. This could either mean that there are no competent China scholars in India to contribute to the report, or that the drafters of the report thought that they possessed enough expertise on China and India-China relations to make the necessary policy recommendations.

The second issue that perplexed me was the fact that given the importance of (and the perceived threat from) China, as repeatedly underscored in the document, the drafters of the report did not find it necessary to recommend the development of research infrastructure in India on China and Chinese affairs. This could also mean one of two things. Either the drafters are satisfied with the current state of China studies in India, or that they believe that there is no need for a cohort of China academics, beyond the diplomatic corps, journalists, op-ed writers, etc, to play a role in the deliberations of India’s China policy. For them, scholars of China in India seem to be irrelevant to any kind of policy-related discourse. The document clearly indicates that there is no need for China studies in India.

Lack of Interest

I have wondered the same things about the Indian government’s interest (or lack thereof) in consulting China scholars and investing in the field of China studies in India. This is in stark contrast to the Title VI programme (sometimes also called Foreign Languages and Area Studies grant) of the United States (US), established under the National Defence Education Act of 1958 as a response to the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union. Under the Act, grant from the US government supported (1) instruction of fields and topics that provide full understanding of areas, regions or countries; (2) research and training in international studies; (3) work in the language aspects of professional fields and research; and (4) instruction and research on issues critical to current world affairs.

For some, the India-China war of 1962 was a significantly bigger and consequential “Sputnik moment” for India. If the Indian government had considered a long-term strategy to engage with China and undertaken in-depth analysis of a country that was clearly already a “significant foreign policy and security challenge for India”, it could have invested in scholars and educational institutions doing research on China. In fact, the reverse seems to have taken place with the decline of Cheena-Bhavana (Institute of Chinese Language and Culture), Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal and whatever expertise that institution may have developed with regard to China. Were it not for the financial support from the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Ford Foundation, the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi and the associated publication called China Report may not even have been established. To its credit, the Indian government eventually decided to support the Institute in the 1990s and continues to be its leading funding organisation.

However, China studies, including the teaching of Chinese language, in India is in dismal state. Leading universities, such as the Calcutta University, have no permanent position for Chinese language faculty or anyone who specialises on China. Books on China published in India rarely use Chinese language sources and are seldom peer-reviewed by competent scholars. These are not only indications of the neglect of the China studies field, but also the lack of an effort to competently understand and analyse a strategically important region.

I will here attempt to highlight three aspects, which I believe are important for the establishment and development of China studies programmes at Indian universities. These three aspects are: (1) infrastructure, which includes financial support from government and the private sector, access to language labs, textbooks, research materials, etc, and the presence of first-rate teachers and researchers; (2) curriculum, which integrates language study, disciplinary expertise, and imparts analytical tools; and (3) employment opportunities.

Employment Opportunities

Let me start with one of the most important reasons students decide to major in a field of study at the college and university level. Job prospects after graduation is the primary concern of a majority of students entering colleges. With regard to China studies in India, there were very few job opportunities before the 1962 war, but there were vibrant official and commercial exchanges between the two countries, which offered some employment options to students. Government scholarships made it possible for Indians to study in China and return to teach at places such as the Cheena-Bhavana, universities of Calcutta, Allahabad, Benares, Gorakhpur and the School of Languages in Delhi. The 1962 war put an end to these exchanges and led to the decline of many of the China studies programmes in India, even though new departments offering courses in Chinese language and studies were established at Delhi University (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.

When educational exchanges between the two countries resumed in 1978, only two Indian students were sent to China. The numbers increased in the 1980s, but the concern about eventual employment remained due to limited opportunities in the private sector. The situation changed dramatically in the second half of the 1990s with the economic reforms in India and an increase in India-China commercial relations. These developments resulted in the creation of new avenues of employment. The tourism sector, for example, attracted many young graduates, who were engaged in interpretation and served as guides for travellers coming from Taiwan and other Chinese-speaking regions. Some of these graduates also tried to set up tourist agencies for Indian tourists planning to visit Mainland China. The establishment of Indian companies in China and the general increase in trade between the two countries had a similar impact. In fact, the demand for Chinese-knowing individuals has increased to such an extent that there is now a dearth of qualified people. Competency has emerged as the main problem in recent years as students with only two years of Chinese language training are already getting lucrative job offers. To meet this demand, Indian universities and colleges have to restructure existing curriculum, by introducing new courses and providing analytical tools needed to undertake original research on China. This brings me to the problems with existing Chinese language and China studies curricula.

Curricular Woes

Some of the problems with China studies (including language) curricula in India were pointed out in a report written by Madhavi Thampi in 2006. The report noted the fact that there were few interactions between the China studies departments and the other major discipline departments at Indian universities:

As a consequence, the report points out, “the depth and rigor of the research done on China, and the methodology used, has often suffered. It is important to break down this ‘Chinese wall’ between the study of China and the different disciplines” (Thampi 2006).

While the report recommended that such interactions must be established, it did not specify the ways to accomplish the goal, especially given the rigidity of the overall Indian university system. The problem with the curriculum of China studies has also been highlighted in a recently published book titled On China by India: From Civilisation to Nation State (Shih et al 2012), also without any recommendations about how to address the shortcomings.

In 2012, I attended a round-table discussion on the teaching of Chinese language at the Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies at JNU. Students there repeatedly noted the need for various courses to meet the demands of the job market and for pursuing further research on China. It was clear that there was not only a need to revamp the existing Chinese language curriculum, but also to introduce courses that would provide students with the analytical tools of humanities and social sciences so as to develop their research and writing skills.

To revamp the existing curricula on China studies, there are three things that need to be accomplished. First, there should be an annual faculty development programme for those already teaching China-related courses at Indian universities and colleges. A majority of the current faculty most likely did not receive training in research methodology and critical analysis of Chinese-language sources or did not take courses that are now needed for private-sector employment. Therefore, it would be difficult for these faculty members to create new courses or revamp the curriculum without first receiving proper training.

Second, a serious attempt has to be made to integrate language teaching, disciplinary training, and the required research and writing skills. I was surprised to find that final year MA students at JNU had never written a book review, a term paper, or a research proposal. How can we expect them to pursue doctoral research and produce academic work at later stages of their career? At the same time, new courses on simultaneous interpretation, classical Chinese, Chinese migration, etc, must be offered to students. In an ideal situation the possibilities of dual or joint degrees should also be considered. The aim should not be to just prepare a student for the Indian market, but a student graduating from an Indian university or college must be able to compete globally with other students.

Third, in order to achieve the above two goals, at the initial stages a nodal institution should take charge of coordinating, facilitating, and overseeing the revamping of China studies curricula nationally. Here I think the Institute of Chinese Studies in Delhi could play a significant role. It already organises an annual meeting on China studies. Panels during these meetings could be devoted to faculty development programmes and curriculum development. This institute should also play an active role in exploring the possibility of dual degrees and joint programmes. All these proposals, however, will be dependent on good infrastructure. In addressing this issue, I return to the unfathomable neglect of China studies after India’s “Sputnik” moment.

Infrastructural Issues

There are no Indian institutions in the list of the top 100 global universities. To expect China studies in India to be globally competitive is perhaps expecting too much from the cracking infrastructure and other problems within the Indian higher education system, especially with regard to humanities and social sciences. However, given the importance of China to the strategic and economic affairs of India, it is imperative that the Indian government devotes sufficient resources to developing the field of China studies.

Perhaps following the Chinese pattern of establishing centres of excellence throughout China, India could also set up similar centres focusing on China studies. During the first phase, these teaching and research centres could be located in the four major metropolitan regions of India and be closely associated with local universities. It is imperative to staff these centres with scholars from around the world. While there is a dearth of good scholars of China in India, there are a few who are outstanding academics who need a proper intellectual environment, encouragement and nurturing in order to bring them on par with international academic standards. Interactions between foreign trained scholars and local scholars could perhaps be of mutual benefit.

These centres of excellence should also take charge of reviewing and developing China-related curricula, conducting faculty development programmes (both for scholars of China and teachers at Indian colleges who teach relevant courses), undertaking innovative research, and producing policy papers. With regard to research, these centres, in addition to working on traditional issues and topics, could also develop niche areas such as in-depth study of China’s relations with south and south-east Asian countries.

Indeed, developing such an infrastructure will require substantial funding, which should come not only from the government, but also the private sector. It is unfortunate that the private sector in India has made very little investment in humanities and social sciences. Even the fact that China is India’s leading trading partner, something that is trumpeted repeatedly, does not seem to have made the private sector take an interest in developing China studies. Perhaps they too, similar to the drafters of the Nonalignment 2.0 report, are satisfied with those who are not trained as China scholars. Clearly, for them also, there is no need for China studies in India.

Concluding Remarks

There is no genuine interest from the Indian government, the private sector, or the leading think tanks in developing China studies in India at present. If the status quo is fine with them, then – at least as far as they are concerned – there is indeed no need for China studies in India. It thus may be a waste of time for students to pursue research in a field that has no future in India, no matter how obsolete or updated the curriculum is at Indian universities. It is useless for the few outstanding Indian scholars of China to strive to do research and publish if their contributions are not recognised even within India. Resources should perhaps also not be spent on conferences and seminars that offer no new insights into China.

There is a great need to develop China studies in India and to revive what was started at Cheena-Bhavana in the 1930s. At that time the goal was to pursue China studies within the pan-Asian, anti-colonial context. Now, the need is more pressing. We need to understand our neighbourhood in a more complex, globalised, and intrinsically connected world, not only because of security concerns, but also due to issues such as the economy, the environment, and the scarcity of resources. It is time to draft a plan and execute it within the next 10 years. If nothing has taken shape within that period, we should frankly acknowledge that India cannot, and perhaps should not, have an internationally recognised China studies programme. That will be a very sad day for all of us who are concerned about the state of China studies in India.

References

Shih, Chih-yu, Swaran Singh, Reena Marwah, ed. (2012): On China By India: From Civilisation to Nation State (Amherst, New York: Cambria Press).

Thampi, Madhavi (2006): “A Report and Recommendations”, Workshop to Review China Studies in India, Delhi, 20-21 December.

China related Power Points for you

In case you want to download any of these, I have a series of Power Point shows I made for varying reasons up on slideshare.  Mostly about China, but some about Korea and other art related subjects as well.  Help yourself and use them as you wish.  You might be able to supplement your own power point presentations with some of the images.  Cheers, PONZ

http://www.slideshare.net/ponzart 

You might need to create an account to see them.

"Son of the Revolution"- Good book about the Cultural Revolution in China

http://www.amazon.com/Son-Revolution-Liang-Heng/dp/0394722744