President Xi stresses developing religions in Chinese context
By MO JINGXI | CHINA DAILY/XINHUA | Updated: 2021-12-06

President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses a national conference on work related to religious affairs in Beijing, capital of China. The conference was held from Friday to Saturday. [Photo/Xinhua]

President Xi Jinping has stressed the importance of enhancing the religious sector's recognition of the motherland, the Chinese nation and culture, the Communist Party of China and socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The measures will help develop religions in the Chinese context, Xi said.

He urged education on nationalism, collectivism, socialism and an improved understanding of history in the religious sector to guide the adaptation of religions to socialist society.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while addressing a two-day national conference on work related to religious affairs, which concluded on Saturday in Beijing.

Stressing the importance of religious affairs in the work of the Party and the State, he highlighted the need to uphold and develop a religious theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, work in line with the Party's basic policy on religious affairs, and uphold the principle that religions in China must be Chinese in orientation.

He also asked for efforts to rally religious people around the Party and government, foster positive and healthy relations among religions, support religious groups in strengthening self-education, and improve the management of religious work under the rule of law.

Xi said that religious activities must be carried out within the scope stipulated by laws and regulations, and should not impair the well-being of citizens, offend public order and good morals or interfere with educational, judicial and administrative affairs as well as social life.

He emphasized training of a team of Party and government officials familiar with the Marxist view on religion and religious affairs, and competent enough to engage in work related to religious people.

In his speech, Xi emphasized the full and faithful implementation of the Party's policy on freedom of religious beliefs, respecting people's religious beliefs and managing religious affairs in accordance with the law.

Religious and nonreligious people share common fundamental interests, both politically and economically, he said.

Xi also urged that the necessary support and assistance be provided to religious groups, which serve as the bridge for the Party and government to unite and contact religious figures and believers.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core has paid high attention to religion in China. Xi has made a series of instructions on religious work at important meetings and during his work inspections.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

Marx Myths and Legends. Cyril Smith
Karl Marx and Religion

Source: “Karl Marx and Religion” was written for “Marx Myths and Legends” by Cyril Smith in March 2005, and rights remain with the author, as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

It is vital to understand the meaning of Marx to grasp his ideas in relation to his development. In this connection, his conception of religion is one of the most important aspects of his notions.

As early as 1842, he wrote:

I desired there to be less trifling with the label ‘atheism’ (which reminds one of children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be brought to the people. (Letter to Ruge, November 24, 1842.)

It was quite easy to deal with religion by just being against it, but that was not good enough. ‘Everybody knows’ that Marx wrote about religion being the opium of the people, so we shall look at the entire passage from which this comes.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions.

It is the opium of the people.

(Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction.)

'Magic mushroom' drug psilocybin edges toward mainstream therapy

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

Psilocybin, or "magic mushrooms," is now legal for mental health treatment in Oregon, a result of a ballot initiative.

 File Photo by Shots Studio/Shutterstock.

Tony Head was depressed and fearing death from stage 4 prostate cancer when, as part of a supervised scientific trial, he took a large dose of the psychedelic agent in "magic mushrooms," psilocybin.

Head donned a mask and headphones to shut out the world around him, and had an experience that changed the course of his life.

"At some point in that time I felt like a higher power or something -- I didn't see anything, I didn't see any type of image -- I felt like something connected and touched me and as soon as it did, I just started crying," Head, an award-nominated actor who lives in New York City, said in an interview with HealthDay Now.

He said the one-time therapy helped relieve much of the anxiety surrounding his prognosis.

RELATED Study finds 'magic mushroom' hallucinogen as good as antidepressants

"I think it taught me how to live better and not worry about dying," he added.

"I was blown away by what had just happened. It's an unimaginable experience, at least it was for me," Head added. "It's something that can't be explained, but I can tell you it is probably one of the most important things that ever happened to me."

Psychedelic therapy focused on psilocybin has garnered much new interest lately as a potential treatment against anxiety, depression and other mental ills.

RELATED Tiffany Haddish on taking mushrooms: 'Everybody looked like Phylicia Rashad'

In fact, the drug is now legal for mental health treatment in Oregon, a result of a ballot initiative. The recent release of Hulu's miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers has also focused fresh attention to the concept of microdosing psilocybin as a means of therapy.

Long history

It's a field that foundered in the 1960s as psychedelic drugs became associated with the left-wing counterculture, explained Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of clinical psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences with the UCLA School of Medicine.

RELATED Oregon votes to legalize psychedelic mushrooms in therapy settings

However, prior to that, psychedelics like psilocybin had shown "great promise" in mental health research, Grob told HealthDay Now.

"In the '50s and '60s, there was a period of time when psychedelics were really considered the cutting edge of psychiatric research, and there was tremendous enthusiasm," Grob said. "There were reports of patient populations who did not respond well to conventional treatments that did very well."

Even Hollywood leading man Cary Grant turned to psychedelics during that early period. The actor took LSD as many as 100 times under the care of a Beverly Hills doctor, according to the documentary Becoming Cary Grant.

"After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light," Grant said in the film. "When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts. I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with."

Now, a new generation of researchers are exploring the possibilities of these drugs to help people in crisis.

Head, 69, took his psilocybin trip as part of a research effort at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, after doctors had told him he probably had three to five years to live. Head has appeared in the HBO dramas The Wire and The Deuce and had a small role in the 2019 movie Joker.

His psilocybin experience lasted for about seven hours, and during it he felt as though he had come into contact with a "higher power" existing in a place beyond death.

"The biggest thing I got out of this was it taught me how not to fear dying. I don't fear death. I don't want to suffer for years like that, but I don't fear death at all," Head said. "I think wherever death is or leads to, it's going to be a good place.

"I think it taught me how to live better and not worry about dying," he added.

Head says he also got everything he needed from psilocybin during his single high-dose trip.

"I have no wish to do it again. I don't need to do it again," he said.

Recalibrating the mind

Just how do psychedelics work their magic on the brain? According to Grob, psilocybin and its pharmaceutical cousins "profoundly alter our state of consciousness" by acting on certain receptors in the brain.

"We also know the circuitry of the brain is briefly modified and in a sense, goes offline and creates more of a resting state," Grob said. "It's almost as if the brain for a period of time goes offline and then recalibrates in an enhanced state.

"It's an alteration of what's called the default mode network, where regions of the brain that normally are very much in communication basically briefly disconnect and create a greater sense of calm and less internal chatter, and perhaps more opportunity to perceive beyond what is normally within our field of awareness," Grob continued.

Research from the 1950s and '60s, as well as more recent studies, have shown psilocybin's promise in helping people like Head who are suffering an existential crisis, Grob said.

Psychedelics have also shown potential in people dealing with alcoholism and addiction, he added.

"Investigators observed dating back to the '50s that individuals with one powerful experience of a psychedelic, with one powerful altered state, appeared to have lost their craving and are able to establish and maintain sobriety," Grob said.

When use turns to abuse

The drug's promise does need to be weighed against its potential for abuse, however, Grob said.

"Going back to the '60s, there's no lack of examples of individuals who misused and abused the drug and got themselves into some serious situations which no one would want to replicate," Grob said. "There are inherent risks when this drug is ingested in uncontrolled settings, without proper facilitation by an experienced psychotherapist who is trained in administering this model."

Grob also noted that psilocybin and other psychedelics still require more research to fully understand their risks and benefits, given that academic study into the drugs fizzled out after the 1960s.

"We have today the opportunity to take a fresh look at these compounds, utilizing optimal conditions," Grob said. "We have the support of many high-level officials within academia. The regulatory agencies are far more receptive."

For example, there needs to be rigorously controlled studies to test the potential benefits of microdosing, the psychedelic treatment highlighted by Nine Perfect Strangers, Grob said.

"It's still more in the realm of conjecture, and the positive reports we're hearing are essentially anecdotal case reports," Grob said. "These individuals do report on occasion a very remarkable transformation, remarkable therapeutic outcome, but we really don't know for sure whether this is a real phenomenon or a placebo effect."

More study needed

Psilocybin has garnered more interest in modern research and therapy than LSD because it has a few advantages over the more powerful psychedelic, Grob said.

A psilocybin trip tends to be much shorter than with LSD, although it can extend to as long as six or seven hours. The trip also tends to be easier to guide, more visionary, and less likely to create anxiety or paranoia in the patient, Grob said.

People running these studies will need to seriously consider the patient's mindset and expectations and place them in a positive, carefully controlled setting, Grob said.

"You take all those factors into account, there's a good likelihood you can guide someone through this altered terrain in a safe manner and allow them to have the kind of experience that might endow them with the kind of insight and the kind of positive transformative experience that leads to therapeutic change," Grob said.

Head said that he can definitely see the potential of psilocybin to help treat people with addiction and other mental health issues, if it's used in a supervised way.

"This drug opens a door to put you in another place that you wouldn't normally be able to get to in your brain," Head said. "It has that kind of effect on you."

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more about its psychedelics research program.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Report details US' 'alienated' democracy

By ZHAO JIA | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2021-12-06 

A woman wears a US flag in her hat as with the Lincoln Memorial in the background, 

during a ceremony at the World War II Memorial on Veterans Day in Washington,

 on Nov 11, 2021. [Photo/Agencies]

American style gravely ill with money politics, elite rule, dysfunctional system

The Foreign Ministry released a report on democracy in the United States on Sunday, exposing the deficiencies and abuse of democracy in the country as well as the harm of its exporting such democracy.

The report, titled "The State of Democracy in the United States", based on facts and expert opinions, said it is hoped the US will improve its system and practices of democracy and change its way of interacting with other countries.

Democracy in the US has been "alienated and degenerated" over the years and has increasingly deviated from the essence of democracy and its original design, the report said.

The self-styled American democracy is now gravely ill with money politics, elite rule, political polarization and a dysfunctional system, it said.

That US democracy has gone wrong is reflected in the country's practices and events, including the Capitol riot on Jan 6, its entrenched racism and tragic mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, "American-style democracy can hardly uphold public order and ethics, nor advance public wellbeing to the fullest", the report said.

The US, despite the structural flaws and the problematic practice of its democratic system, has attempted to model other countries after its own image and export its brand of democracy.

Such entirely undemocratic attempts are at odds with the core values and tenets of democracy, the report said.

Beijing has urged Washington on many occasions to get to work in earnest to ensure its people's democratic rights and improve its system of democracy as well as undertake more international responsibilities and provide more public goods to the world.

"It would be totally undemocratic to measure the diverse political systems in the world with a single yardstick or examine different political civilizations from a single perspective," said the report.

Su Xiaohui, deputy director of the China Institute of International Studies' Department of American Studies, said the report reveals that the US is by no means an exemplary model of democracy.

"With its mounting internal problems, the US still points fingers at others and pushes for what it calls 'democratic transition', plunging many regions and countries into turmoil, conflict and disaster, which shows its hypocrisy," Su said.

Su cited the Capitol riot as saying that even Washington's allies and partners have spotted the malaise of US-style democracy.

Diao Daming, an associate professor of US studies at Renmin University of China, said the report exposes US democratic chaos in an objective and comprehensive manner and plays a positive role in helping the world understand its state of democracy.

"China's intention is not to contend with the US for the definition of democracy, nor does it fight for the so-called position of 'beacon of democracy'," he said.

Diao said the report, which is rich with facts and tight logic and represents various views, including those of US experts, also reflects the universal concerns of the international community about US-style democracy.

As for the "Summit for Democracy" to be held by the US, he said it had nothing to do with democracy and was a move by the US to engage in group politics and try to achieve a hegemonic agenda in the name of democracy.

US-style democracy 'only awakened during voting'

By CAO YIN | CHINA DAILY | Updated: 2021-12-06

A voter casts her ballot at a polling station in Chongqing's Shapingba district 

on Friday. 

Voters in the district reelected deputies to grassroots people's congresses. 

[Photo provided to China Daily]

With wide participation and strong oversight, China's democracy is more extensive, more genuine and more effective than the United States' version, senior Chinese officials said while introducing a white paper over the weekend.

The State Council Information Office issued the white paper "China: Democracy That Works" on Saturday, noting that there is more than one path to democracy and there are many ways to achieve it.

When asked which style of democracy is better, Chinese or US, Tian Peiyan, deputy head of Policy Research Office with the Communist Party of China Central Committee, answered that its "practice is the most convincing" argument.

He said under the US democratic system, politicians are agents of interest groups, rather than representing the interests of the majority of voters and the country.

"Those politicians can randomly make promises for the sake of elections, but they seldom fulfill the promises after being elected," Tian said. "Superficially, they accept voters' supervision, but when they're elected, the voters have no option but to wait for the next election.

"It's a democracy that is only awakened during voting but becomes dormant after voting, and it's also a democracy where voters listen to dazzling slogans only during the election but have no say after the election," he said, adding that such democracy is not a real democracy.

China's democracy, however, is a whole-process people's democracy under the CPC's leadership, he said.

Party members and officials at all levels must accept the process and supervision by the CPC and the people while performing their duties to ensure the power granted by the people is always used for serving the people's interest.

"Any violation of Party disciplines and laws must be punished, no matter how senior the violator is or how high his or her social status is. No one is an exception," Tian said.

Tian emphasized that deputies to people's congresses, China's legislative bodies, are from the people and elected by the people. Therefore, they represent the people, serve the people and should be responsible for the people, he said.

"The deputies have always kept close contact with the public, listening to people's requests, striving to solve their problems and receiving their supervision in all areas," he added. "Deputies who don't perform their duties or violate disciplines or laws can be disqualified or removed from office."

Guo Zhenhua, deputy secretary-general of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the country's top legislature, pointed out the behavior of US politicians before and after elections changed due to the lack of a supervisory mechanism after they take office.

"But in China, both the Constitution and the Electoral Law stipulate that deputies to the NPC and local people's congresses must be supervised by voters and the original electoral units," he said. "Voters or original electoral units have the right to recall elected representatives."

Since the 13th NPC was established in 2018, a total of 10 NPC deputies have been dismissed, he said.

Xu Lin, director of the State Council Information Office, said the US' so-called "Summit for Democracy", due to be held Thursday and Friday, is actually intended to contain and suppress countries that have social systems and development models different to the US'.

He said in a widely diverse world, democracy comes in many forms, adding that China has always been receptive to any type of democracy and given respect to efforts to explore and pursue different models.

According to the white paper, China did not duplicate Western models of democracy, but created its own, and its original aspiration was to ensure the people's status as masters of the country.

It says China built and developed whole-process people's democracy in line with its national conditions, noting it involves complete institutional procedures and covers various fields.

Whole-process people's democracy is a combination of electoral democracy and consultative democracy, and is applied through a combination of elections, consultations, decision-making, management and oversight, it says, adding it has been fully tested through wide participation

China's democracy guarantees all people's right to happy life, experts say

Xinhua | Updated: 2021-12-05 

A staff member registers itinerary of people on a vehicle at an 

expressway entry in Harbin city,

 Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, Dec 3, 2021. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING -- China's State Council Information Office on Saturday released a white paper titled "China: Democracy That Works," which expounded on the values, history, institutional frameworks, practices, and achievements of China's democracy.

China's democracy, according to experts and observers from multiple countries, has guaranteed all people's right to a happy life and promoted the country's rapid development.

"The Chinese democratic system mainly focuses on whether the people have the right to govern their country, whether the people's needs are met, and whether the people have a sense of fulfillment and happiness," Kin Phea, director-general of the International Relations Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, told Xinhua.

"That's why it gains the great support of the Chinese people from all walks of life," he pointed out.

Hamed Vafaei, director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Tehran, said that there is no standard democracy in the world, and that people in each country should find their own development and democratic model.

The Chinese people, Vafaei noted, have chosen their own path, and China's development in various fields, as well as achievements in poverty reduction, have all demonstrated the high quality of China's democracy.

Bambang Suryono, chairman of Asia Innovation Study Center, an Indonesian think tank, said that a good democracy is one that has been built according to actual conditions of the country and that also works for the benefit of the people.

China's democracy has made remarkable achievements in poverty reduction, health care, education, and other areas, Suryono continued, while calling it a democracy that serves its people.

Mehmet Enes Beser, director of the Bosphorus Center for Asian Studies in Turkey, stressed that China has always put people's lives first during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting that China's democracy has been put into practice well.

Some Western countries, by contrast, failed to take active and timely actions when the pandemic broke out, showing that "democracy" was only an empty campaign slogan for them, Beser added.

$14.7 million in funding announced to fight invasive species in Alberta mountain parks

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Money will be spent over 5 years on prevention and

education programs

CBC · Posted: Dec 04, 2021 2:28 PM MT | Last Updated: December 4

Steven Guilbeault, left, visited Cascade Ponds in Banff National Park Saturday to announce almost $15 million in funding to fight invasive species. (Evelyne Asselin/CBC)

Steven Guilbeault, federal minister of environment and climate change, announced $14.7 million in funding to fight invasive aquatic species in Alberta's national parks Saturday.

The money will be spent over five years on conservation projects in Banff, Jasper, Kootenay, Waterton Lakes and Yoho national parks.

"Aquatic invasive species are a very concerning issue, certainly here in the region as they are in many parts of Canada," said Guilbeault during a visit to Cascade Ponds in Banff National Park.

"This money will help increase surveillance and monitoring and try to ensure that we limit, if not stop entirely, the spread of these invasive species."

The funding will be used for prevention and eduction programs, and is divided for each park:

• $4.70 million for Yoho and Kootenay parks, as well as the northern part of Banff National Park
• $3.73 million for Jasper National Park
• $3.43 million for the southern part of Banff National Park
• $2.84 million for Waterton Lakes National Park

"The mountain national parks are particularly vulnerable to aquatic invasive species due to the high amount of water recreationists who visit each year," said a release from Parks Canada.

"Aquatic invasive species alter aquatic ecosystems, cause irreversible damage, impact vulnerable species at risk, and spread downstream beyond park boundaries through the interconnected river systems."

Rick Kubian, the field unit superintendent for the Lake Louise Yoho Kootenay field unit, says the first priority is not allowing species to get introduced in the first place.

"It's very expensive to remove aquatic invasive once they've taken hold," said Kubian.

He also said it's important to make sure sure visitors are aware of how they can help prevent the movement of invasive species between parks.

Whirling disease, mussels of concern for mountain parks

Parks Canada hopes to prevent a parasite that causes whirling disease, which causes skeletal deformities in some fish, such as whitefish, bull trout and cutthroat trout, from entering the ecosystems.

A sign posted by Alberta Parks near a stream in Kananaskis warns of the risks of whirling disease in summer 2021. (Sarah Rieger/CBC)

Invasive zebra and quagga mussels are also a concern. They take nutrients from the water, which affects the entire food web, and change water chemistry. Mussels can also clog structures such as dams, water treatment facilities and boats.

These species are often transported by people. Making sure all watercraft and recreational gear are cleaned, drained and dried before moving between bodies or water is the best way to protect against aquatic invasive species, says Parks Canada.

• Parks Canada introduces new boating, fishing rules for Banff National Park

Mandatory policies for visitors to clean, drain and dry their boats are already in place for Kootenay, Waterton Lakes and Yoho national parks. Banff joined that list this summer.

With files from Evelyne Asselin

 Anger management: New Twitter CEO needs to make platform less hostile

December 4, 2021

When the CEO of a major company steps down, there’s usually a clear and obvious reason: sometimes scandal, often shareholder revolt — or more simply, that after amassing billions, it’s just time.

In the case of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, however, there seems to be a different reason: his heart just didn’t seem to be in it any more.

Dorsey, who announced his exit from Twitter this week — and whose public persona over the past few years has morphed into more a New Age, crypto-obsessed yoga fan than a tech CEO — also runs financial company Square, and many in the company felt his focus on Twitter was insufficient. While Twitter itself remains important, the company has been on an unsteady course, failing to do much to grow or tackle the many challenges of an acrimonious platform.

The question, then, as new CEO Parag Agrawal steps in, is what Twitter needs to do to ameliorate what has become, for better or worse, the closest thing to an online public square. What seems key for Twitter is twofold: first, to make itself more useful to everyday people; but perhaps more importantly, find new ways to clamp down on the bitter, angry, inflammatory culture that seems to have become endemic to the platform.

One should be clear that Twitter is never going to replace Facebook: your dad or your aunt will never turn to a social-information site in order to connect with people. It is also completely dwarfed by other social-media platforms. Twitter sits at a comparatively meagre 315 million users on the site daily, while Facebook has nearly 10 times as much. To try and narrow that gap seems futile.

What Twitter has rather remarkably done, however, is to become the place people go to both find out what is happening and debate the issues of the day. The platform has become the go-to home for journalists, writers, media figures, or people who simply wish to shoot the breeze and make jokes in a public way. If you want to be plugged in to the world and culture, you don’t turn to Instagram or Facebook; you log on to Twitter.

However, Twitter abides by the classic “one per cent rule” of the internet: a tiny fraction of people are responsible for the bulk of content and most people just lurk. That is a problem for a company looking to grow.

Despite some steps made by the site — curating tweets instead of presenting them in chronological order; showing trending topics, if often clumsily — Twitter is still an overwhelming place for newcomers. While for expert users it is a great place to learn both the news and what people are saying about it, for new users it is a miasma of in-jokes, niche cultural expectations, and a flood of information, the quality of which is hard to parse.

Agrawal’s task is thus to make Twitter’s vitality as a source of information for its core users available to all. That will likely involve more and better human curation, more accessible onboarding, and a focus and marketing push to get people to think of Twitter as the place to go for news and discussion.

But before that can happen, the nature of discussion also needs to be tackled. While Twitter of course cannot single-handedly tackle the deep polarization of contemporary societies, certain features of the site do lend themselves to bad-faith interpretations, drive-by condemnation and a bitter tone.

The ability to “quote tweet” — adding commentary to another’s tweet — very often results in blunt, frequently unfair interpretation, quashing conversation rather than encouraging it. It also cultivates a culture of people talking past one another.

Maybe more importantly, Twitter has yet to deal with two key problems: context collapse; and the tension between ephemerality and permanence.

Context collapse is the problem that arises when differing groups and interpretive frameworks try to engage online with the same thing. The result — at best miscommunication, at worst deep offence — is something that could be mitigated by an ability to limit tweets to particular groups, or perhaps only those who ask for them.

The other issue is that while a record of statements is sometimes useful, very often tweets — which can be small, throwaway thoughts — have no reason to be made permanent. While Twitter tried an ill-fated experiment with vanishing posts called Fleets, there is no default way to have tweets delete, or choose certain ones to disappear.

Those oversights reflect a product and a platform that has for too long languished, and been unresponsive to the needs of both its current and new users. Dorsey’s heart may have never been in it, but if Twitter is to find a more stable footing, Agrawal is going to have give it not just effort but, more importantly, a commitment to building a platform which cultivates a culture of communication, rather than the anger that so predominates now.

Navneet Alang is a Toronto-based freelance contributing technology columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @navalang

News From, TORONTO STAR

Absence of Dissident Artist’s Works Spurs Fears of Hong Kong Art Censorship

December 04, 2021 
VOA News

 Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei joins supporters of Julian Assange as they stage a demonstration outside the High Court in London, Oct. 27, 2021

HONG KONG —

Art censorship in Hong Kong is “very much real,” an expert said after the city’s much-anticipated art gallery opened recently without showcasing some expected artworks by a Chinese dissident.

The former British colony’s largest art museum, M+, opened Nov. 12 to great fanfare, but also heated debate because of its failure to exhibit two of famous exiled artist Ai Wei Wei’s artworks in a donated collection of celebrated Swiss art collector Uli Sigg.

Among the collection of contemporary Chinese art from the 1970s to the 2000s, Ai’s Study of Perspective: Tiananmen, a photo that features Ai’s middle finger in front of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and Map of China, a sculpture made of salvaged wood from a Qing Dynasty temple, have been under review by authorities since March this year, essentially barring them from display.

That came two weeks after M+ director Suhanya Raffel guaranteed that the gallery would show Ai’s art and pieces about the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, according to The South China Morning Post.

In the same month, Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam said the authorities would be on “full alert” to ensure museum exhibitions would not undermine national security, after pro-Beijing lawmakers said the artworks at M+ caused “great concerns” to the public for “spreading hatred” against China, public broadcaster RTHK reported.

In a September editorial in local media outlet Stand News, Ai called the government’s decision to shelve his two pieces “incredible.”

“The Study of Perspective series I started at Tiananmen Square 26 years ago once again became the testing ground for an important change in history, and a convincing note for China’s political censorship of its culture and art,” Ai wrote. Other images in the series featured the middle finger in front of the White House, the Swiss parliament and the Mona Lisa.

Sigg donated over 1,400 artworks and sold 47 pieces to M+ gallery in 2012, before the city experienced political turmoil from the 2014 Occupy Central movement, the 2019 anti-government protests and implementation of the controversial national security law last year.

FILE - A woman walks outside the M+ visual culture museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Nov. 11, 2021.

Sigg originally wanted to make mainland China home to his collection, but no art galleries there could ensure that his artworks, including Ai Wei Wei’s, would be displayed without restriction, according to SOAS University of London art history professor Shane McCausland.

“Hong Kong’s legal framework at the time promised that these artworks could be shown…[but] policy on display will have changed dramatically after the national security law came in,” McCausland told VOA.

The head of the West Kowloon Cultural District, Henry Tang, said ahead of the M+ gallery opening that the board would “uphold and encourage freedom of artistic expression and creativity,” but added that the opening of M+ “does not mean artistic expression is above the law.” He also denied that the two artworks put under review meant they were illegal.

However, such an ostensibly normal bureaucratic act from the government is China’s usual form of censorship, McCausland said.

“It’s often unclear even to the initiated, where the boundary lies, as it moves all the time. The laws are framed in vague language: they often appear to be applied arbitrarily and randomly. …The application depends on the [Chinese] leadership from the top, where there is a degree of sensitivity to criticism and intolerance of critiques,” he said.

FILE - A painting titled 'Rouge 1992' created by Chinese artist Li Shan, is seen during a media preview in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, Nov. 11, 2021.

The city’s freedom of artistic expression has been declining since the national security law took effect last year, according to a local independent performance and dance artist who asked that she only be identified by her initial, “V.”

“This [the ban] did not come as a surprise - some artists’ works that might be considered sensitive are not allowed to display recently after the national security law was out, not to mention M+ is a government venue,” V told VOA.

Self-censorship has become a norm in Hong Kong’s art circles, V added.

“The atmosphere has been rather tense. Some movie screenings had to be canceled. Now we still want to voice out our views, but we start thinking about if we should express in a very edgy way, or if politics is the only way for us to express,” she said.

A new film censorship law came into effect in November that aims to “prevent and suppress acts or activities that may endanger national security.”

The supposedly autonomous region is now on track to mirror mainland China’s propaganda and censorship, McCausland said.

“Essentially Hong Kong is poised to become very similar to the framework within the rest of China, with artists being vigilant and constantly watching the moving sense of what’s OK and becoming attuned to when the likelihood is high of the system kicking in with legal ramifications, such as house detention or other judicial options that are open to the authorities, which they are happy to use to ensure the public discourse of harmony,” he said.

Growing art censorship is expected to intensify the talent drain in Hong Kong, which has witnessed an exodus to Western countries, including Britain and Canada, since the start of the 2019 anti-government protests, the art expert said.

“We know there was an astounding majority in favor of democracy - the views of the people were very clear but now you are hearing and seeing the space for expression has been closed down, and often in a heavy-handed way,” McCausland said.

The University of Hong Kong, one of Hong Kong’s most prestigious educational institutions, has ordered the removal of a sculpture commemorating the student victims of the Tiananmen crackdown since October. The university cited “the latest risk assessment and legal advice” as the reason for the request to take away the iconic statue that has been in place for the last 24 years.

“Being an ‘artivist’ [activist artist] is not easy anymore - I started thinking about the role I should play in this era. … I can’t say for sure I will go, but some of my artist friends left because funding has become more challenging,” V said.

‘There is still hope here’ in Hong Kong: Zhang Xiaogang, Chinese contemporary artist, tours M+ museum

Zhang Xiaogang, the first major Chinese art figure to tour M+, admits to being pleasantly surprised by Hong Kong’s new museum and its exhibitions

Chinese artist Zhang Xiaogang (wearing a cap) in conversation with Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator of M+, on December 2, 2021. The event was held at the M+ Lounge for patrons of Hong Kong’s new museum of visual culture. Photo: Enid Tsui

He says it would be ‘difficult’ to show some of its Chinese contemporary art in mainland China, and reaffirms his intention to live and work in Hong Kong


Enid Tsui
Published: 3 Dec, 2021

One of China’s best-known contemporary artists said after touring the newly opened M+ museum it had reassured him there is “still hope” in Hong Kong and that he was ready to live and work in the city as soon as quarantine restrictions on travel are lifted.

Zhang Xiaogang, 63, has painted some of the most recognisable works of the post-1989 generation of Chinese artists, and a large reproduction of his Bloodline – Big Family No. 17 (1998) is displayed prominently in one of the M+ lobbies.

Zhang, who arrived in Hong Kong on November 28, is the first major mainland Chinese artist to see the new museum of visual culture.

Speaking on December 2 to museum patrons, he said he had doubted what M+ could accomplish after the “rich” events of the past two years in Hong Kong, a reference to the 2019 anti-extradition-law protests and subsequent introduction of National Security Law, which includes broad powers of censorship that many fear will diminish the civil liberties enshrined in the city’s mini-constitution.

My art is independent of politics and only comes from within. I can make anything I like inside my studio in mainland ChinaZhang Xiaogang

“The opening hasn’t been very well publicised in mainland China. And the level of anticipation had gone from very strong to numbness over the years. But now that I’m here, I am surprised and also touched to see the building and the exhibitions,” he said.

Without mentioning specific works, he said the contents in the Sigg Galleries of contemporary Chinese art would be “difficult” to show under mainland China’s strict censorship regime. “There is still hope here,” he added.

“The Dark Trilogy: Fear, Meditation, Sorrow” by Zhang Xiaogang on display ahead of a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong in 2020. Photo: SCMP/Sam Tsang

M+ opened on November 12 after 14 years of preparations, at a time when the Hong Kong government’s strict implementation of the National Security Law has impinged on many aspects of life in the city, including the cultural realm: people have been arrested for publishing a children’s book about sheep and wolves that was considered seditious, for example, and the film censorship law amended to allow the screening of films to be banned on national security grounds.

The museum’s Sigg Collection of contemporary Chinese art, which includes three pieces by Zhang, has been attacked for promoting anti-Chinese sentiment by pro-Beijing politicians and newspapers controlled by the Chinese government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. However, M+ insists its curatorial independence has not been affected by politics, and works by dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and paintings referencing the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown remain on display.

Speaking to the Post, Zhang stressed that his long-planned move to Hong Kong was mainly prompted by practical considerations rather than freedom of expression.

“New Beijing” by Wang Xingwei, which references the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, on display at M+. Photo: SCMP/Felix Wong

In 2019, Zhang decided to set up a second home and workshop in Hong Kong because Pace Gallery, which represents him, closed its permanent space in Beijing. He has visited the city many times – coming often to attend the annual Art Basel international art fair – but acknowledged that his knowledge of the city remains shallow. (He could not remember where his Ap Lei Chau workshop is located, for example.)

“It is simply too complicated to move my paintings from Beijing to the gallery here,” he said, referring to the city’s tax-free status and easy connections to the rest of world before the pandemic.

Of his work, Zhang said: “My art is independent of politics and only comes from within. I can make anything I like inside my studio in mainland China.” That is true even for his painting One Day in March 2020 (2020), which he completed shortly after the death of Dr Li Wenliang, the whistle-blower in Wuhan who tried to alert people to the spread of Covid-19 but was reprimanded by the police.

One Day in March 2020, Zhang Xiaogang. Photo: courtesy Pace Gallery

The painting shows a hand holding a torch that illuminates newspaper cuttings about the pandemic. “I have never said it was a commemoration. The painting merely reflects my own emotions. It’s open to interpretation,” Zhang said.

He said he did appreciate the chance to see art in Hong Kong that he wouldn’t see in Beijing, especially as many of the paintings at M+ donated by Swiss collector Uli Sigg were by artists he has known well. “It gives me such a warm feeling to see these works again,” he said.

In a speech at M+, Zhang spoke obliquely about how his whole approach to art changed after the 1989 crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.

Bloodline – Big Family No 3 (1995) by Zhang Xiaogang.

“After 1989, artists like myself experienced a great awakening from within. We felt we had to find our own identity, our own position, role and values in the world. It was a big turning point for me,” he said.

He explained that before 1989, his paintings were “romantic narratives” reflecting on Western art historical materials and philosophy that the 1978 opening up of China had made available to a generation that grew up during the Cultural Revolution. But after a short spell in Germany in 1992, he returned home to look through old family photo albums and saw them with new eyes, he said.

The result was his “Bloodline – Big Family” series. These large oil paintings of Cultural Revolution-era family studio portraits show near-identical faces all bearing the same, expressionless, blank look.

“It moved me that no matter what pain people went through in their lives they looked the same in the photos. I also wanted to reflect certain de-individualised traditions in Chinese aesthetics,” he said.

He has long moved on from this career-making series, and in recent years has produced works that are more surreal and dream-like. Some of these will soon go on display at a new solo exhibition in Shanghai’s Long Museum, he said.

“I look forward to the day when I can have a solo exhibition at M+”, he added.

Fort Severn housing project earns architecture nod

2021 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence mark the highest level of design recognition in Canada

Northern Ontario Business Staff

Dec 2, 2021


'Resilient Duplex', a conceptual design for a residential building in Fort Severn First Nation, has received a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence

A housing project designed to meet the needs of residents in Fort Severn First Nation has been selected as the winner of a 2021 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence.

Conceptualized by Two Row Architect of Six Nations of the Grand River and KPMB of Toronto, the project is one of six selected for the national awards, now in their 54th year and the highest recognition for future architecture projects in Canada.

The winning design is the result of an initiative of the National Research Council of Canada’s Path to Healthy Homes initiative, which pairs Indigenous communities with Indigenous-led architectural firms in an effort to produce a best practices manual for the design of affordable, resilient, culturally appropriate Indigenous housing.

It’s an effort to address the issues of overcrowding and substandard housing, which are faced by 20 to 25 per cent of Indigenous people in Canada.

In Fort Severn, designers worked closed with band leaders and community members to glean input on their design.

The ‘Resilient Duplex’ enables Elders to live independently longer, while providing units for young families.

According to the judges, “The Resilient Duplex iterative housing system allows elders and young families to live as neighbours and support each other. A single-storey accessible elder’s apartment is attached to a two-bedroom unit with a flexible loft space. The two units share an entry porch, encouraging interaction between neighbours, and the elder’s apartment has a private terrace off the bedroom.”

In their design, the team also considered challenges of building in the remote north.

The project currently remains in the design phase, while proponents seek out funding to move it forward to construction.

Canadian Architect's full synopsis of the project is available to read here.

Our collaboration with Two Row Architect for A Resilient Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation has been awarded a 2021 Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect

by ahnationtalk on December 3, 2021

We are pleased to announce that our collaboration with Two Row Architect for A Resilient Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation has been awarded a 2021 Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect. The jury recognized the project “as a design rooted in a robust consultation process with its northern Ontario community.”

Indeed, central to this project was a series of community engagement sessions, including meetings with band leaders, site visits to housing units currently under construction, and a multi-generational community workshop in which we asked Fort Severn residents of all ages to describe what they love about their community, the challenges they face with their current homes, and how new housing could better meet their needs and aspirations. This input determined the project team’s needs assessment and design strategies.

“We have tried to think of our research and design work as the product of a two-way exchange of knowledge and skills, rather than a case of settlers arriving with predetermined solutions. Two Row has been at the center of that exchange,” says Laurence Holland, a project team member. “Brian and his team have been so adept at navigating multiple worlds, synthesizing the needs, wants, and aspirations of the community and ensuring that the resulting design is a result of both technical innovation and cultural specificity. ”

The jurors bestowed five Awards of Excellence, seven Awards of Merit, two Student Awards of Excellence, one Photo Award of Excellence, and two Photo Awards of Merit. The program this year received 174 professional entries, 39 student entries, and 46 photo entries.

You can find the full list online and in the December 2021 issue here.

From First Nations architects, a new vision for Northern housing


DECEMBER 5, 2021

As part of an initiative by the National Research Council of Canada, Indigenous architects working with Fort Severn have come up with a better solution to the insufficient housing program.

Two Row/KPMB

There is an old house in Fort Severn, Ont., which has been lying vacant for decades. The windows of the one-story building are long gone, but the silver tamarind siding is a reminder of how homes were built with locally available materials in Ontario’s northernmost community.
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These days, customized housing kits of vinyl siding and asphalt shingles are shipped hundreds of kilometers on a flatbed truck by Winter Road to a remote community located along Hudson Bay’s southern shore. A barge carries goods and supplies in the summer when the bay is not frozen.

The community is trying out a new housing type designed by Indigenous architects, who worked with Fort Severn as part of an initiative by the National Research Council of Canada, called the Path to Healthy Homes. They say they have come up with a better solution to the inadequate housing program provided by the federal government, which accounts for reserved infrastructure such as housing.
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Called Flexible Duplex for Fort Severn First Nation, it is one of four new housing types designed by four First Nations architects to meet the specific needs of four different Indigenous communities.

David Fortin Metis is the architect who coordinated Path to Healthy Homes, an initiative that developed out of the work of the First Nations National Building Officers Association. The union developed a Technical Guide to Northern Housing to help communities that were “recourse to previous methods of building that were flawed, and causing too many problems” under the federal government’s Reserved Housing Program. .