ABSTRACT
Zhang Danhong, a Chinese woman working as an editor at the Deutsche Welle radio
station in Germany, was suspended from her job in mid-August of 2008 following remarks
she had made in the media four days before the opening of the Beijing Olympics. She said
that ‘The Communist Party of China has more than any political force in the world
implemented Article 3 of the Declaration of Human Rights’; referring to the fact that the
Chinese authorities were pulling more than 400 million people out of poverty. This
remark, however, was met by a strong reaction from German society as well as various
overseas Chinese communities, i.e. political dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners.
They attacked Zhang as someone who was ‘courting’ China’s Communist Party regime, a
regime with one of the worst records on human rights in the world. A couple of days later,
Zhang was temporarily relieved of her duties. The suspension brought about an equally
strong backlash however. A group of German Sinologists signed a petition, asking the
radio station to restore Zhang’s position. Many people in China have also voiced sympathy
and concern for Zhang, accusing those in the West who chant the slogans of human rights
and freedom of speech of hypocrisy. Zhang’s case demonstrates the clash of different
conceptions of human rights that occurred as Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympic Games.