Award-Winning Photojournalist Disappears In China, And Here Are 21 Of His Pics China Don’t Want You To See
Rokas L BoredPanda staff
Lu Guang’s photos have exposed the sides of China that its government isn’t keen on talking about: drug addicts, HIV patients, environmental problems, and so on. This time, however, the award-winning photographer has himself become the center of a story. His wife Xu Xiaoli claims she hasn’t heard from her husband since the 3rd of November.
On 23rd October, Guang flew to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, where he had planned to attend some photography events. Later, he was to fly to Sichuan to meet his friend Mr Chen to participate in a charity event. But Mr Chen was unable to find or contact the photographer.
Image credits: Xiaoli11032018
When Mr Chen asked Guang’s wife about his whereabouts, she had nothing. Investigating the situation, Ms Xu contacted the wife of the person who had invited her husband to Xinjiang. She was told both Mr. Lu and the host had been taken away by national security. Local officers from Zhejiang province, Mr Lu’s hometown, later confirmed this.
(Worker in Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia. April 10, 2005. Image credits: Lu Guang)
“He has been lost for more than 20 days”, said his wife. “As his most direct family member, I have not received any notice of his arrest,” Ms Xu said on Twitter. “I have repeatedly contacted Xinjiang police but have been unable to get through. It is our 20th wedding anniversary [next week]. We should be celebrating it together. I can only hope for his safe return. ”
(A heavy truck carrying coal and lime drives away, causing dust to fly and harming the nearby residents. Image credits: Lu Guang)
According to the BBC, Xinjiang has become notorious for its tight security controls, heavy surveillance and police presence, tackling what they describe as growing radicalism among the ethnic Uighur Muslim community. The government is sensitive to criticism and has detained reporters who were investigating negative stories about China in the past.
(Eleven-year-old Xu Li of Hutsou is diagnosed with bone cancer. Image credits: Lu Guang)
“The reality in China is you never know if you’re going to get into trouble because there are no written rules,” the photographer said in an interview last year.
(Children also live in the industrial district. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Its economic development has consumed lots of energy and generated plenty of pollution. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(On 16 July 2010, the pipeline of the Newport Oil Wharf of Dalian Bay exploded, sending lots of oil into the sea. Many fishing boats were assigned to clean up the oil contamination for 8,150 times. Image credits: Lu Guang)
The photographer won at the 2004 World Press Photo competition for his exposure of “AIDS villages”, where people 678 people got infected with HIV after selling their blood. Out of 3,000 people, 678 have contracted HIV and 200 have died.
Image credits: Lu Guang
(A woman carrying her severely ill grandson implores the sky to prevent the devil of pain returning. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Disabled orphans adopted by charitable farmers. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Children with cerebral palsy licks milk powder off a bed to feed. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Laseng Temple has an over 200-year-old history, which includes the study of Mongolian medicines. It was seriously polluted by the surrounding factories, so few pilgrims go there now. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Many factories have been moved from the country’s east to its central and western parts. Employees work in the dust. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(The Baotou Steel plant dumps mineral processing sewage into the tailings dam. Image credits: Lu Guang)
Image credits: Lu Guang
(The chemical industrial park of Yanwei Port in the city of Lianyungang dumps sewage in the sea. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(In the jeans-producing village of Xintang Town, in Guangdong, workers gain the stone for grinding the denim every morning. Image credits: Lu Guang)
Image credits: Lu Guang
(A wife cares for her dying husband. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Qi Guihua, held here by her husband, fell ill when she returned to the village from Beijing to celebrate the Spring Festival. She died two hours after this photograph was taken. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Families such as this one have sold almost everything valuable in their home to help meet medical expenses. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(A young girl warms her hands in winter. Her father is infected with HIV and still cares for five children and his elderly parents. Image credits: Lu Guang)
(Two girls prepare for the funeral of their six-year-old brother, who died from AIDS. Image credits: Lu Guang)
Cédric Alviani, the director of Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia bureau, called on China to disclose where Lu is and to “guarantee journalists’ freedom of movement and security, including in Xinjiang Province.” It has not answered yet.
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What do you think ?
This is what happens when leaders are allowed to take too much power over their citizens. Hold your governments accountable, people...
I would give this 1000 up arrows if I could.
I appreciate your confidence. :-)
I agree. Unfortunately, it's hard to rebel when the government owns all the high tech weapons. No rebellion in China would stand a chance without outside intervention. And what country would be dumb enough to back that?
The people tried rebeling at one point in Tianamen Square, the footage from that was horrific. Sady I don’t think outside intervention would do much good either, China is too powerful for anyone to make an enemy out of.
You're forgetting about the power of ordinary citizens to stop cooperating with the mechanisms of society. Grinding the gears to a halt by not supporting the machines they run is just as good as open conflict, provided you can get enough people away from their video games and useless cat memes.
Well, he was trying to, before he disappeared without warning.
Yes, and we should honor his bravery in doing so. Men like this change perceptions and when enough people change their perception, so changes the world.
People actually voting in politicians wanting the U.S. to become a socialist country need to see images like this, and Venezuela, and countless others.
I live in an ex communist country and even if it's been 29 years since the fall of communism, the same communists are running the country, and there is no infrastructure, no industry, the health system is awful, half the country lives on a minimum wage of 200 euros or less. Communism is like the plague, no ideology is perfect but I would always choose capitalism to communism. Communism is more of a utopia, it sounds good in theory the trouble begins when you put it into practice, there is no such thing as equality. There was no freedom, if you talked bad about the dictator you would be questioned by the secret police and get arrested, the stores were empty, there were long lines to buy even the most rotted food if there was any, all you saw on tv were the dictator and his wife for 2 hours a day being praised like gods, food rations, power blackouts, extreme poverty, no freedom of speech and there was no equality between social classes, the rich were still rich and the poor poorer!
Too simplistic. You're making the assumption that the principles of Socialism are inherently bad. Any idea in the wrong hands can be manipulated toward bad ends. Free speech can be used to suppress speech, a free press can be used to suppress freedom of the press. China did, after all, start incorporating principles of capitalism into the economic mechanisms of their Communist machine once Mao died, and their economy has been one of the most productive on the planet, in terms of average annual growth, for the last few decades.
There are some pretty shocking images of the USA. Police gunning down unarmed civilians, politicians allowing lead poisoning in water to brain damage children, polluted rivers which catch on fire etc etc. Also wanting healthcare for all doesn’t mean you want industry to be allowed to run wild with pollution. If anything it’s an example of unregulated capitalism- putting the profits above the health of citizens. It’s businesses who are polluting.
This is what happens when citizens allow industry to run their government
But this seems like a normality now, any country, UK, USA, China, India etc- if it's not just government than it's money- people buy cheap stuff and contribute to it but then people do buy cos it's cheap and all they can afford while politicians seems to do fine. It's all 'people's power' and lots of talk but leaders are still screwing us up- even more than before. Some try to hold them accountable but with so much hate around- the only ones on the top are leaders/politicians. There is too much talk about people having power but somehow they don't.
J, I'm not a fan of this "personal responsibility" rhetoric most commonly espoused by americans (not to generalise, but yeah). That is an illusion of power I just don't think we have. And if anything, 9/11 made people more complicit and more willing to trust. A corporation or a corporatised government could use it to justify any act, surely that was evident in the years that followed. That being said, I do absolutely agree that we can do things to make it not so easy. Example, average houses in Australian major cities now sell for an average of 1.2 million, someone bought a run down structurally unsound (actually completely unsafe) 3 bedroom house built in the 30s (one "bedroom" had been added on in like fashion much later) for AUD$780k because its located in an "up and coming" suburb. So no the owners think their house is worth that much and will be permeating these ridiculous house prices until nobody can afford homes.
to continue, I believe the general population should have the power to refuse to buy homes until they stop overvaluing them
That's because it takes more willpower to put down the simplistic cat memes and take a hard look at the reality you face. And people have been so conditioned to the lax standards of modern consumerism that their brains just wont register on that level anymore. Unless people have a serious incentive to do that, like what happened on 9/11, they aren't going to be bothered with putting forth the mental effort it takes to make society better where it matters most - on the ground.
That's the problem, I think they don't recognize accountability given the things they're doing.
More like, they simply don't care.
Perhaps, another problem is that few people in today's world have the courage to stand toe to toe with a tank in order to let their leaders know enough is enough.
"Hold your government accountable"? This is China, in case you hadn't noticed, China, where every individual is tracked in their everyday life, recorded on cameras - where you can't make a move without jeopardizing your freedom... No one believes it's "people's power", especially not the Chinese, they've just been used to centuries of abuse by their leaders...
You can always stop supporting the mechanisms that make the machine run... Most people wont, though, because they don't have the willpower to be martyrs for a cause.
Isn't this the reason countries turn into communism?
Not sure what your question is supposed to mean. But if you’re asking if the reason countries turn into comunism is because citizens give their governments too much trust and control, the answer is yes!!
No idea how you came to that conclusion...
Wonder if all that waste and pollution has to do with the cheap prices for products marked "made in China". Wonder if it also has to do with multinational corporations who have their factories in China.... This, combined with a government that cares less about human right. And these are the results.
"multinational corporations" Probably this. While I'm all for a free market I think MNCs do more damage than good when they start thinking themselves above governments and reproach.
Free markets are why people buy stuff from China.
They don't think themselves above the government... the government is the one who allows this. They don't have strict laws and don't enforce the ones they have. The MNC's just use this to make more money...
Free markets make it possible to maximize production of goods and services that consumers want, at the lowest prices. The Tenth Commandment tells consumers to think twice before wanting and buying things. A cheaper cell phone - when it drives industries to misuse people and pollute the environment - should not be desired by consumers. It's a moral issue people never think about.
Yes, rampant consumerism is largely to blame. These pictures give a very good incentive to scale back our material indulgences....
These photos are the result of $19.99 jeans made in China, or anything else made in China. The Apple factory has a wire fence around the roofs from stopping employees from jumping off, the circumstances are so dire. The horrors of the industrial revolution (child labour, unchecked pollution) have been moved to countries like China and India, and the citizens of these countries are suffering profoundly, but the whole world is also being polluted
It's such a trail of destruction and trauma. :(
Its purely because of the sheer volume of factories plus the enormous number of desperate and underpaid workers. Abhorred but we must not be apathetic. Where is Lu? The focus of the article is his disappearance being related to the photographic evidence he has collected.
owners of the corporations that commission china's cheap real estate and labour are partly responsible for the tragedies you see here, they are owned by the u.s, germany, uk, and other countries. nothing will change and the western media will portray these injustices as merely a result of chinese communist (or some such) oppression while the multinationals, energised by media sanctioned innocence, will go on to produce more crap in china completely unregulated
If you can find the documentary, River Blue, it will answer all your questions and then some. 😕😕
Thanks for the suggestion. I might check it out.
Us consumers probably don't help when we insist on low prices over quality.
The result of such horrific pollution is the death of our planet...what the heck do they think they're going to drink or eat when they've polluted the entire planet...humanity cannot die quickly enough...what a waste of our beautiful Earth
This breaks my heart to see this. It breaks my heart even more that I can't help everyone suffering.
We could only buy ethically produced stuff?
That's not feasible for a lot of us, sadly. Stuff made for cheap in other countries is cheap here, and those of us who are poor can't make the choice to only buy ethically produced local goods. :\
Yes this! I usually avoid things with the labels "made in china" but from now on I will not be buying anything made in china, I don't care what it costs me I cannot support this I am sick to my stomach
That's only part of the solution. You have to convince suppliers to only buy from ethical producers and there are few outfits in the supply chain willing to take a hit in their bottom line for the sake of a purely 'ethical' business model.
I don't know what kind of stuff is ethically or not. I don't want to say "I never by anything from China anymore'. I don't want to harm honest Chinese people that make good products. By saying 'I don't buy anything from China' these people don't get the chance to fight and compete corrupt bigger compagnies since noone buys from them. The problem is that I don't know if I am buying something from a honest entropeneur or a slave... I wish there was a way to know as a consumer what to buy or not. In what country ever. Some kind of global system that actually checks conditions. If I know I have a choice.
Just like I've started buying stuff that is either in recyclable containers or in biodegradable containers. I'm also hoping Boyan Slat, Dutch inventor of a machine that will harvest plastic dumped in the ocean, will succeed in cleaning up the waters before it's too late.
That would make you feel better but the reality is that the tens of millions of factory workers and their families in China and elsewhere on the world who work for subsistence wages would starve if everyone adopted the policy of only buying ethically produced goods. It's a vicious cycle.
I've tried to do this with the stuff that I use for my research. It's impossible. Either I can buy electronic components directly from China, or I can buy them in North America, in which case it's the same stuff with an enormous markup. My choices are to buy Chinese or quit. Sometimes I wonder if I should.
Our. Orporations just as guilty, maybe in some areas to a lesser extent, but still after the mighty dollar.
This is what happens when leaders are allowed to take too much power over their citizens. Hold your governments accountable, people...
I would give this 1000 up arrows if I could.
I appreciate your confidence. :-)
I agree. Unfortunately, it's hard to rebel when the government owns all the high tech weapons. No rebellion in China would stand a chance without outside intervention. And what country would be dumb enough to back that?
The people tried rebeling at one point in Tianamen Square, the footage from that was horrific. Sady I don’t think outside intervention would do much good either, China is too powerful for anyone to make an enemy out of.
You're forgetting about the power of ordinary citizens to stop cooperating with the mechanisms of society. Grinding the gears to a halt by not supporting the machines they run is just as good as open conflict, provided you can get enough people away from their video games and useless cat memes.
Well, he was trying to, before he disappeared without warning.
Yes, and we should honor his bravery in doing so. Men like this change perceptions and when enough people change their perception, so changes the world.
People actually voting in politicians wanting the U.S. to become a socialist country need to see images like this, and Venezuela, and countless others.
I live in an ex communist country and even if it's been 29 years since the fall of communism, the same communists are running the country, and there is no infrastructure, no industry, the health system is awful, half the country lives on a minimum wage of 200 euros or less. Communism is like the plague, no ideology is perfect but I would always choose capitalism to communism. Communism is more of a utopia, it sounds good in theory the trouble begins when you put it into practice, there is no such thing as equality. There was no freedom, if you talked bad about the dictator you would be questioned by the secret police and get arrested, the stores were empty, there were long lines to buy even the most rotted food if there was any, all you saw on tv were the dictator and his wife for 2 hours a day being praised like gods, food rations, power blackouts, extreme poverty, no freedom of speech and there was no equality between social classes, the rich were still rich and the poor poorer!
Too simplistic. You're making the assumption that the principles of Socialism are inherently bad. Any idea in the wrong hands can be manipulated toward bad ends. Free speech can be used to suppress speech, a free press can be used to suppress freedom of the press. China did, after all, start incorporating principles of capitalism into the economic mechanisms of their Communist machine once Mao died, and their economy has been one of the most productive on the planet, in terms of average annual growth, for the last few decades.
There are some pretty shocking images of the USA. Police gunning down unarmed civilians, politicians allowing lead poisoning in water to brain damage children, polluted rivers which catch on fire etc etc. Also wanting healthcare for all doesn’t mean you want industry to be allowed to run wild with pollution. If anything it’s an example of unregulated capitalism- putting the profits above the health of citizens. It’s businesses who are polluting.
This is what happens when citizens allow industry to run their government
But this seems like a normality now, any country, UK, USA, China, India etc- if it's not just government than it's money- people buy cheap stuff and contribute to it but then people do buy cos it's cheap and all they can afford while politicians seems to do fine. It's all 'people's power' and lots of talk but leaders are still screwing us up- even more than before. Some try to hold them accountable but with so much hate around- the only ones on the top are leaders/politicians. There is too much talk about people having power but somehow they don't.
J, I'm not a fan of this "personal responsibility" rhetoric most commonly espoused by americans (not to generalise, but yeah). That is an illusion of power I just don't think we have. And if anything, 9/11 made people more complicit and more willing to trust. A corporation or a corporatised government could use it to justify any act, surely that was evident in the years that followed. That being said, I do absolutely agree that we can do things to make it not so easy. Example, average houses in Australian major cities now sell for an average of 1.2 million, someone bought a run down structurally unsound (actually completely unsafe) 3 bedroom house built in the 30s (one "bedroom" had been added on in like fashion much later) for AUD$780k because its located in an "up and coming" suburb. So no the owners think their house is worth that much and will be permeating these ridiculous house prices until nobody can afford homes.
to continue, I believe the general population should have the power to refuse to buy homes until they stop overvaluing them
That's because it takes more willpower to put down the simplistic cat memes and take a hard look at the reality you face. And people have been so conditioned to the lax standards of modern consumerism that their brains just wont register on that level anymore. Unless people have a serious incentive to do that, like what happened on 9/11, they aren't going to be bothered with putting forth the mental effort it takes to make society better where it matters most - on the ground.
That's the problem, I think they don't recognize accountability given the things they're doing.
More like, they simply don't care.
Perhaps, another problem is that few people in today's world have the courage to stand toe to toe with a tank in order to let their leaders know enough is enough.
"Hold your government accountable"? This is China, in case you hadn't noticed, China, where every individual is tracked in their everyday life, recorded on cameras - where you can't make a move without jeopardizing your freedom... No one believes it's "people's power", especially not the Chinese, they've just been used to centuries of abuse by their leaders...
You can always stop supporting the mechanisms that make the machine run... Most people wont, though, because they don't have the willpower to be martyrs for a cause.
Isn't this the reason countries turn into communism?
Not sure what your question is supposed to mean. But if you’re asking if the reason countries turn into comunism is because citizens give their governments too much trust and control, the answer is yes!!
No idea how you came to that conclusion...
Wonder if all that waste and pollution has to do with the cheap prices for products marked "made in China". Wonder if it also has to do with multinational corporations who have their factories in China.... This, combined with a government that cares less about human right. And these are the results.
"multinational corporations" Probably this. While I'm all for a free market I think MNCs do more damage than good when they start thinking themselves above governments and reproach.
Free markets are why people buy stuff from China.
They don't think themselves above the government... the government is the one who allows this. They don't have strict laws and don't enforce the ones they have. The MNC's just use this to make more money...
Free markets make it possible to maximize production of goods and services that consumers want, at the lowest prices. The Tenth Commandment tells consumers to think twice before wanting and buying things. A cheaper cell phone - when it drives industries to misuse people and pollute the environment - should not be desired by consumers. It's a moral issue people never think about.
Yes, rampant consumerism is largely to blame. These pictures give a very good incentive to scale back our material indulgences....
These photos are the result of $19.99 jeans made in China, or anything else made in China. The Apple factory has a wire fence around the roofs from stopping employees from jumping off, the circumstances are so dire. The horrors of the industrial revolution (child labour, unchecked pollution) have been moved to countries like China and India, and the citizens of these countries are suffering profoundly, but the whole world is also being polluted
It's such a trail of destruction and trauma. :(
Its purely because of the sheer volume of factories plus the enormous number of desperate and underpaid workers. Abhorred but we must not be apathetic. Where is Lu? The focus of the article is his disappearance being related to the photographic evidence he has collected.
owners of the corporations that commission china's cheap real estate and labour are partly responsible for the tragedies you see here, they are owned by the u.s, germany, uk, and other countries. nothing will change and the western media will portray these injustices as merely a result of chinese communist (or some such) oppression while the multinationals, energised by media sanctioned innocence, will go on to produce more crap in china completely unregulated
If you can find the documentary, River Blue, it will answer all your questions and then some. 😕😕
Thanks for the suggestion. I might check it out.
Us consumers probably don't help when we insist on low prices over quality.
The result of such horrific pollution is the death of our planet...what the heck do they think they're going to drink or eat when they've polluted the entire planet...humanity cannot die quickly enough...what a waste of our beautiful Earth
This breaks my heart to see this. It breaks my heart even more that I can't help everyone suffering.
We could only buy ethically produced stuff?
That's not feasible for a lot of us, sadly. Stuff made for cheap in other countries is cheap here, and those of us who are poor can't make the choice to only buy ethically produced local goods. :\
Yes this! I usually avoid things with the labels "made in china" but from now on I will not be buying anything made in china, I don't care what it costs me I cannot support this I am sick to my stomach
That's only part of the solution. You have to convince suppliers to only buy from ethical producers and there are few outfits in the supply chain willing to take a hit in their bottom line for the sake of a purely 'ethical' business model.
I don't know what kind of stuff is ethically or not. I don't want to say "I never by anything from China anymore'. I don't want to harm honest Chinese people that make good products. By saying 'I don't buy anything from China' these people don't get the chance to fight and compete corrupt bigger compagnies since noone buys from them. The problem is that I don't know if I am buying something from a honest entropeneur or a slave... I wish there was a way to know as a consumer what to buy or not. In what country ever. Some kind of global system that actually checks conditions. If I know I have a choice.
Just like I've started buying stuff that is either in recyclable containers or in biodegradable containers. I'm also hoping Boyan Slat, Dutch inventor of a machine that will harvest plastic dumped in the ocean, will succeed in cleaning up the waters before it's too late.
That would make you feel better but the reality is that the tens of millions of factory workers and their families in China and elsewhere on the world who work for subsistence wages would starve if everyone adopted the policy of only buying ethically produced goods. It's a vicious cycle.
I've tried to do this with the stuff that I use for my research. It's impossible. Either I can buy electronic components directly from China, or I can buy them in North America, in which case it's the same stuff with an enormous markup. My choices are to buy Chinese or quit. Sometimes I wonder if I should.
Our. Orporations just as guilty, maybe in some areas to a lesser extent, but still after the mighty dollar.