James Hookway: Coup Ousting Thailand's Premier Tests Democracy in Key U.S. Ally

An apparent coup in Thailand raises serious questions about the stability of a key U.S. ally in Asia that until recently had served as an anchor of democracy and investment in the region.

Amid a tropical downpour late yesterday in Bangkok, tanks moved on key government offices and television stations in the Thai capital and seized command of the city while the country's caretaker prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was traveling in New York. Government- run television stations said the armed forces and the police had taken control of the country, and a statement signed by the Thai army's commander in chief imposed martial law.

The seemingly bloodless coup, the outcome of which still is unclear, underscored longstanding questions about who runs Thailand, a country of 65 million people that is a favorite of Western tourists and companies despite its opaque governance. Thailand is known as a parliamentary democracy, and early this decade Mr. Thaksin became the first civilian prime minister to complete his term.

Many analysts believe the country still relies heavily on the powers of an aging and elusive king who is repeatedly invoked as the only true source of political legitimacy there. Whether the king played any role in the attempted change in government was unclear. A return to military rule would unwind years of progress toward a stable democracy.

Mr. Thaksin cancelled a speech he was scheduled to deliver at the United Nations last night. His spokesman, Surapong Suebwonglee, who was with Mr. Thaksin in New York, said the coup leaders "cannot succeed" and was confident the coup would fail "because democracy in Thailand has developed to some . . . measure of maturity." But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday, just hours before the coup began, Mr. Thaksin indicated the opposite, saying Thai democracy "is very young -- the system is not mature." He seemed relaxed and unfazed by rumors of a coup that were then swirling.

"I know there are those who really support me and those who are against me," Mr. Thaksin said.

As the coup unfolded, at least a dozen tanks surrounded Government House, Mr. Thaksin's office, but later withdrew. Thai television showed a motorcade of generals traveling along rain-slick streets to brief King Bhumibol Adulyadej on their coup. Other stations followed by broadcasting only patriotic music and announcements from the coup group. Many Thais that didn't turn on their televisions remained unaware that anything had even happened when they went to sleep last night.

The outcome of the latest power struggle is of vital importance to investors and Western governments. Although Thailand no longer is among the world's fastest-growing economies -- as it was in the 1980s -- it has emerged as an important staging ground for Western companies that don't want to place all their bets on China. This includes the world's largest auto makers, including Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., all of which have made the country a vital production platform.

Thailand's currency, the baht, suffered its biggest one-day weakening in three years yesterday. A large devaluation of the baht helped trigger the Asian financial crisis of 1997, highlighting Thailand's importance in the region, though many analysts believe Asia's economy is far healthier now, limiting any potential economic fallout. Thailand's stock exchange was scheduled to be closed today, along with schools, banks and government offices, the Associated Press reported.

Thailand also is viewed as a critical hub in the U.S.-led war on terror. The American Embassy in Bangkok remains one of the largest U.S. missions in the world. The U.S. and Thailand run a joint counter- terrorism training center on the outskirts of Bangkok, called the International Law Enforcement Agency, which has been central to the Bush administration's efforts to combat Islamic extremism in the region.

Joint Thai and U.S. operations were successful in tracing suspected terrorist Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, to the city of Ayuthaya in central Thailand, where they arrested him in 2003. Mr. Isamuddin was a central suspect in the planning of the Bali, Indonesia, bombing of 2002 that killed more than 200 people.

The Bush administration said it was concerned about the military takeover and hoped for a democratic solution. "We continue to hope that the Thai people will resolve their political differences in accord with democratic principles and the rule of law," said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck.

The apparent coup came after nearly a year of political unrest in which Thais took to the streets to protest a government they increasingly viewed as corrupt and ineffective.

Protesters had a number of complaints about Mr. Thaksin, including his inability to settle an armed and violent separatist movement in the country's south. They also were upset over allegations of corruption related to his family's $1.9 billion sale of a telecommunications company to Singaporean investors this year. The sale was arranged in such a way that enabled the family to avoid paying taxes on the transaction.

The sale enraged many Thais. Many already had accused Mr. Thaksin, one of Thailand's richest men, of abusing his power in government to boost his wealth and weaken democratic institutions, including the country's courts.

Mr. Thaksin dissolved the government and called a new election in April to restore his mandate. Key opposition parties boycotted the vote amid continued street protests, and the country seemed rudderless until the king questioned the validity of the April election in a public address, calling on courts to settle the issue.

Thai courts subsequently invalidated the results, in which Mr. Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party won the majority of seats in Parliament. Mr. Thaksin subsequently took the role of caretaker prime minister pending a new election that was expected later this year. A number of analysts of Thailand believed Mr. Thaksin's party would again win the national elections, possibly explaining the timing of the Thai military's move.

Mr. Thaksin, who has served as Thailand's leader since 2001, remains extremely popular with many Thais, especially in rural areas, for a series of populist measures that included cash payouts to small villages and subsidized health care.

He also gained favor with foreign investors by promoting an economic program to boost Thailand's economy in the face of growing competition from China. This program, which many economists viewed as a template for other, similar countries dealing with the rise of China, included efforts to privatize state companies, to negotiate free-trade pacts with other countries, including the U.S. and Japan, and to authorize large investments in new infrastructure.

Many of those initiatives -- including some of the free-trade deals -- have languished this year while the government was paralyzed by political stalemate. Meanwhile, many Thais believe the king and his supporters were disenchanted with Mr. Thaksin's attempts to aggressively consolidate his power.

Political analysts say the tacit support of King Bhumibol is necessary for any individual or group that aspires to govern Thailand. The 78-year-old monarch has frequently played a political role, implicitly signing off on military coups at times, most notably in 1976, and intervening to ensure the return of civilian governments, as in 1992.

King Bhumibol, who many Thais view as a quasidivine figure, rarely gives interviews and often chooses to talk indirectly.

His annual birthday speeches are carefully examined in Bangkok. In 2002, he published a biography of his favorite pet dog, a stray mongrel rescued from the streets of Bangkok, that was widely interpreted as a warning that Thailand shouldn't abandon its traditional values in a quickly modernizing world.

It is considered inappropriate for Thais to speak publicly about the king's possible role in politics, and on Monday, Mr. Thaksin denied suggestions that the king was involved in any of the recent political dramas.

"One should not bring him into politics," he said.

Nevertheless, in June Mr. Thaksin said a "charismatic person" was out to remove him from his job as prime minister. Mr. Thaksin went on to say that a mysterious figure whom he refused to name was "wielding extraconstitutional force" to push him from office.

Most Thais assumed that to mean the king or his chief lieutenant, Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda. By appearing to attack the monarch and his supporters, Mr. Thaksin escalated the economically damaging political conflict into a contest between Thailand's royal and military traditions, and a new, more modern way of governing a rapidly industrializing country.

King Bhumibol's advisers struck back with a show of force. Donning his military uniform, chief adviser Gen. Prem toured army camps around the country warning soldiers that their loyalty is to the king, not Mr. Thaksin.

Other people seen as close to the royal palace gave prominent speeches in recent weeks that were interpreted as critical of Mr. Thaksin's push to modernize the Thai economy and open it up to more foreign investment.

Seizing on that sentiment, local shopkeepers across the country have petitioned the king and the government in recent weeks to block big foreign-owned hypermarkets, such as Tesco PLC of the U.K. and Carrefour SA of France, that are sprouting up across Thailand and taking away their business.

These tensions came to a boiling point last night. An announcement on Thai television declared that a "Council of Administrative Reform" with King Bhumibol as head of state had seized power in Bangkok and nearby provinces without any resistance.

A separate announcement on national television, signed by Army Commander in Chief Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, said martial law had been declared across Thailand and the country's 1997 Constitution revoked. The general, a Muslim in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country, ordered all troops to report to their duty stations and not leave without permission from their commanders.

"The armed forces commander and the national police commander have successfully taken over Bangkok and the surrounding area in order to maintain peace and order. There has been no struggle," the announcement said.

The military coup didn't meet any initial resistance in Bangkok, although it wasn't clear whether there were any confrontations elsewhere in Thailand.

Mr. Thaksin tried to put the breaks on the coup before it took effect. He telephoned a Thai television station from New York to declare a state of emergency and ordered Gen. Sondhi to report to Mr. Thaksin's deputy, effectively stripping Gen. Sondhi of his power. After 10 minutes, Mr. Thaksin's voice cut off.

A spokesman for the coup, retired Lt. Gen. Prapart Sakuntanak said on Thai television that the power grab was temporary and that power soon would be returned to the people. Some observers said they suspected the military doesn't want to control the country, only to remove Mr. Thaksin.

"Never in Thai history have the people been so divided," Lt. Gen. Prapart said. "The majority of people had become suspicious of this administration, which is running the country through rampant corruption. Independent bodies have been interfered with so much they could not perform within the spirit of the constitution."

A U.S. official who has worked on Thai issues added that the White House would be inclined to take a relatively aggressive stance against a Thai coup, due to President Bush's stated commitment to promoting democracy in the Middle East and Asia. "We're trying to build democracy around the world, and we're just going to stand by" while there are tanks on the streets? the official said. "You could imagine the snickering in the region."

Some officials working on Thailand worry that the Bush administration, absorbed with crises in Lebanon and Iraq, didn't offer signals early enough that Washington would be opposed to a coup. Now, they say, the White House will likely have to work aggressively through the Thai monarchy to restore the democratic process, though they note that it might be too late for Mr. Thaksin's government.

Sep 20, 2006. pg. A.1

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David Luhnow: Calderón Faces Difficult Challenges

MEXICO CITY -- With conservative Felipe Calderon now all but certain to become Mexico's next president, he faces a critical issue that will determine the success of his six-year term: How to prevent growing political confrontation from undermining the country's transition to democracy and free markets.

Mexico is coming off its version of the Florida 2000 election battle. Mr. Calderon's narrow July 2 defeat of his leftist opponent Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also landed in a court, which this week rejected Mr. Lopez Obrador's contention that the balloting was marked by fraud. The electoral court is now widely expected to name Mr. Calderon the president by the legal deadline of Sept. 6. But unlike 2000, when former vice president Al Gore accepted the Supreme Court's ruling on the election, Mr. Lopez Obrador refuses to recognize judicial power. Instead, the former Mexico City mayor is promising to make the country ungovernable. It's as if Al Gore had called for revolution instead of calm.

On top of dealing with his election opponent, Mr. Calderon faces other violent challenges. Radical leftist groups have taken control of Oaxaca, one of Mexico's most famous Colonial-era cities, shutting down the local government in an attempt to force out the elected governor. And in a sign of the growing reach of the drug trade, decapitated bodies turn up regularly in cities where frightened local authorities have largely given up police work.

The 44-year-old Mr. Calderon promises to deal with these challenges through a combination of carrots and sticks. He wants to reach out to Mr. Lopez Obrador's supporters among the poor by promoting policies aimed at creating a more equal society, including expanding to poor urban areas a successful rural-welfare program that requires families to keep their children in school to receive aid. At the same time, he vows to strengthen a weakened Mexican state by confronting growing mob rule, using police to crack down on political and drug-related lawlessness around the country.

"I understand that people have the right to protest things, but only so long as they don't infringe upon the rights of others," Mr. Calderon said this week in a speech to women business leaders. During his campaign, he promised he would not let groups of people "with machetes" interfere with his government.

Mr. Calderon's first challenge will be simply getting to the presidential chair. Mr. Lopez Obrador's supporters have blockaded key roads in Mexico City for the past month, and plan to step up their campaign of civil disobedience. They pledge to block the country's annual armed forces parade during Independence Day celebrations on Sept. 16, and to prevent Mr. Calderon from being sworn in at Congress on Dec. 1.

Mr. Calderon's success in toning down political confrontation will shape his presidency, and determine whether he has the political skills to tackle some of the long-term problems that have stunted Mexico's development. Among them: reforming the energy sector, confronting monopolists and union bosses who have an iron grip on the country's largest industries, and asserting the rule of law in a country where police, courts and Congress are often dismissed as unjust or corrupt. The outcome will also determine whether the U.S. has a politically stable and prosperous neighbor next door or has yet another headache in its growing list of global problems.

Despite hard talk by the former energy minister, his camp is still debating how tough to get with Mr. Lopez Obrador's protest movement, according to people familiar with the discussions. One key issue on the table: Whether to urge President Vicente Fox to use force to clear Mr. Lopez Obrador's tent villages from Mexico City's main boulevard and the central square.

While some advisers think a crackdown could ease Mr. Calderon's transition to government, others worry that confrontation would play into his rival's hands by inflaming a movement that is losing public support. Polls show support for the protest movement waning and moderates in Mr. Calderon's camp believe Mr. Lopez Obrador's supporters in his Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, are likely to distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular leader.

Meanwhile, Mr. Calderon faces some political weakness himself. Polls show that a third of the voters believe he won through fraud. And ideological inclusiveness doesn't come naturally to his National Action Party, or PAN, a buttoned-down Catholic organization that's tight with the business elite and often criticized as out of touch with broader Mexico.

Before the vote, Mexicans and foreigners alike assumed that Mexico's peaceful transition to a democracy was a done deal, completed when President Fox ousted the former ruling party six years ago. The prevailing wisdom was that the next government's challenge was how to transform a sluggish economy to compete with more dynamic Asian rivals. Even with Mr. Lopez Obrador's ongoing challenge, the peso and stock markets remain firm and foreign investors don't seem overly concerned.

But the bitter post-electoral fight has revealed a side of Mexico that many assumed was the stuff of history books. Mexico's political transformation during the past decade is the country's third attempt to build a lasting democracy, says Enrique Krauze, one of Mexico's most prominent historians and a Lopez Obrador critic. The first attempt, by President Benito Juarez, lasted nearly a decade but didn't survive his 1872 death in office. The second was the brief tenure of Francisco Madero, which ended in 1913 with his assassination and a complete breakdown in order, sparking one of the most violent stretches of the period Mexicans now call their "revolution."

"There should be no doubt that Mr. Lopez Obrador represents a revolutionary threat," Mr. Krauze argues. "This is no joke. I hope that he will not succeed and democracy will prevail. But nevertheless, it's important that people realize what the stakes are."

Political analysts say the provincial politician from the rural state of Tabasco is looking to re-enact recent events in Latin American nations like Bolivia and Ecuador, where radical protest movements forced out democratically elected leaders. In Bolivia, the leader of those protests, Evo Morales, went on to win an election last year and is now that country's president.

Indeed, Mr. Lopez Obrador, 52, openly says Mexico "needs a revolution" and has vowed to keep his protest movement going until the nation's "simulated republic" is brought down. He has promised to use mass protests to prevent Mr. Calderon from carrying out his agenda -- saying, for instance, that he will block moves to allow private industry to have a greater participation in everything from oil and electricity production to pension funds. According to polls, about 16% of Mexicans say they would be willing to take part in actions like blockading roads or airports to help Mr. Lopez Obrador.

Cesar Yanez, a spokesman for Mr. Lopez Obrador, says the movement intends to use street protests to force Mr. Calderon to respond to the leftist's goals, such as ensuring that natural resources like oil remain in the hands of the state. He rejected comparisons with Bolivia and said there are no plans to use violence to bring down the Calderon government. "For us, the Calderon government will be illegitimate, but that's not the same thing as saying there will be violence," he said.

Protest movements like Mr. Lopez Obrador's have flourished in recent years, finding fertile territory in a new democratic landscape swept clean of the harsh tactics of the old authoritarian regime. The graceful colonial city of Oaxaca offers a glimpse of the kinds of tactics available to Mr. Lopez Obrador. There, a protest movement is trying to force out a democratically elected governor. For the past three months, the 70,000-strong teacher union has laid siege to the city demanding a wage hike. It has occupied the downtown area with roadblocks and prevented all three branches of government from working by blocking government buildings with protesters armed with sticks, pipes and machetes.

Hotels in the one-time tourism magnet are largely empty and the city is lawless. Small gangs of student radicals, their faces covered in bandanas, roam the city center and question passersby whom they deem "suspicious." Taking photographs is now banned. Police don't dare work -- no one answers the local equivalent of 911 -- the state Congress meets secretly at a hotel, and judges stay at home.

Oaxaca state governor Ulises Ruiz, from the former ruling PRI party, tried to clear the protesters from the city in mid-June, but the mob easily beat back his police, several of whom were briefly taken hostage. After the attempted crackdown, the protesters got more radical, demanding the governor resign as a precondition for talks. They also burned buses and cars, stormed eight privately run radio stations to urge citizens to take to the streets, briefly blockaded the city airport and set a 10 p.m. curfew. Mr. Ruiz now wants federal police to intervene, but Mr. Fox has indicated he doesn't want to get involved.

"This place is no man's land," says Elpirio Velazquez, who owns a stall that sells school supplies in the city's central market. Mr. Velazquez says he supported the teachers' wage demands but thinks they've gone way too far in taking up violence and calling for the governor's ouster. "If they kick him out, then what happens? They just kick out any governor they don't like?"

The parallels are striking between the Oaxaca protests and Mr. Lopez Obrador's Mexico City sit-in. Mr. Ruiz won a 2004 gubernatorial race by a very narrow margin over his rival, a candidate of Mr. Lopez Obrador's PRD, which claimed the loss was due to fraud and threatened to organize street protests.

Mr. Calderon's PAN party supported the PRD's candidate in the state race two years ago against Mr. Ruiz, but is now throwing its weight behind the embattled governor, arguing that his resignation would undermine the rule of law. Top PAN officials also argue allowing Mr. Ruiz to step down might encourage Mr. Lopez Obrador to continue his protests in the hopes of eventually forcing Mr. Calderon from office. "What's happening in Oaxaca is a blueprint for the PRD to try to force Calderon from office," says Dagoberto Carreno, the PAN's secretary general in Oaxaca.

Mr. Calderon will have to make some tough decisions about the use of public force that his recent predecessors have shied away from. The government's reluctance to use force is partly explained by history. A 1968 massacre of hundreds of protesters in Mexico City is the country's version of Tiananmen Square. Mexicans tend to view the use of force by the government as repression rather than law and order. When President Fox took power in 2000, polls showed that 80% of Mexicans were opposed to the government's use of force to put down dissent. That figure has since dropped, but is still high at 60%.

Under Mr. Fox, the government's unwillingness to consider force had its cost. Consider what happened to Mr. Fox's plans for a new six- runway airport near Mexico City, a glittering symbol of Mexico's climb into the global economy. Shortly after work on the project began in 2002, peasants who were due to be relocated to make room for the airport picked up machetes, blocked construction crews and took 15 state officials hostage, threatening to set them ablaze unless construction was halted. They won.

After Mr. Fox killed the project, the Mexican press was rich with debate about whether the move was a win for democracy or set a troubling precedent for mob rule. Emboldened by their win, the airport protesters next ran the mayor and police force out of the nearby town of Atenco, and started a regular campaign of highway blockades to demand goods and services. But when a newly elected governor, Enrique Pena, decided to end the airport group's road blockades with force this year, results were mixed. Ill-trained and under-equipped police battled protesters for two days in a bloody confrontation. The protest leaders were later jailed, but Mr. Pena's career suffered after he was forced to respond to charges of brutality and even sexual assaults by the police.

Mr. Calderon hopes to set a different tone, starting in the interim period before his Dec. 1 inauguration. During that time, Mr. Fox remains as a lame-duck president but must work with a new Congress, which will be sworn in Sept. 1. Mr. Calderon wants to work with Mr. Fox to pass some high-profile measures and show he can govern despite the turmoil on the streets. Among the possibilities are a reform of the state-owned oil company's corporate finances and a shake-up in the federal police.

Many political observers say he must go far beyond that to send strong signals that he is serious about addressing the core issues of poverty and scarce job opportunity that gave rise to Mr. Lopez Obrador's movement. In private conversations, some business executives are even urging Mr. Calderon to go after some of the sacred cows of the Mexican economy, such as limiting the reach of the privately held Mexican monopolies. They argue that this would prove that he is not afraid to disappoint constituents in order to unblock logjams to entrepreneurship and growth.

Aug 31, 2006. pg. A.1

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Geoffrey A. Fowler: Gray Zone: An Arrest in China Spotlights Limits To Artistic Freedom

After 12 years in the U.S., filmmaker Hao Wu returned to his homeland two years ago to document the changes shaping Chinese society. He fell in with a crowd of artists and writers and often wrote on his blog about balancing American ideals of civil liberty with the practical realities he found in China.

"Change has to happen," he wrote in a Feb. 17 posting. "But the Chinese have to figure it out themselves."

Five days later, Mr. Wu was arrested and he has been in detention ever since. His alleged crime remains a mystery to his friends, his family and even the lawyer his sister hired to help. These people believe he was detained over his work on a documentary film about Christian churches that aren't recognized by the Chinese government. The lawyer, Wu Yigang, says the Beijing police told him the detention is related to "state secrets," which limits the possibility of a defense. The Public Security Ministry didn't respond to questions.

Mr. Wu's story illustrates how blurry the boundaries of personal freedom have become in China. In surprising ways, China today is far more liberal than it was in the years following the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square. In an old Beijing munitions factory that's now full of galleries, artists sell sculptures lampooning Mao Zedong and depicting Tiananmen Square covered with plastic army figures. The country has its own feed of MTV, encourages students to travel overseas and allows a small but growing group of human rights lawyers to practice within its legal system.

Yet Chinese authorities have also moved aggressively in recent years to censor the Internet, suppress political protests and stifle the press. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists counts 34 Chinese journalists behind bars at present, including 16 Internet writers. Over the past year, the government has closed or tightened control over several newspapers, Internet blogs and publications that have made a name for themselves writing about corruption and other sensitive topics. Last Friday, the official Xinhua news agency announced that China would further tighten controls on blogs and search engines to "purify the environment" by blocking "illegal and unhealthy information."

The government's reluctance to spell out precisely what is and isn't forbidden has created a gray area. Most Chinese censor themselves amid the uncertainty and vague intimidation. Elite artists, writers and filmmakers who push the boundaries do so with scant legal security.

"Pretty much anybody who does creative work in China navigates the gray zone," says Rebecca MacKinnon, a former Beijing bureau chief for CNN who co-founded Global Voices Online, a Harvard University-based project that collects commentary from around the world. The organization employed Mr. Wu as an editor. "People aren't clear about where the line is any more, beyond which life gets really nasty and you become a dissident without having intended ever to be one."

One person who crossed that line -- and then returned -- was Beijing-based rock musician Cui Jian. One of the first Chinese musicians to incorporate Western rock into his songs, Mr. Cui wrote a song, "Nothing to My Name," that was an anthem to students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests. Though the song never mentions revolution, Mr. Cui was sometimes blacklisted after the June 4 military crackdown. He says he was banned from performing in Beijing for 12 years.

Last fall Mr. Cui played a big Beijing concert for the first time since 1989 and his career is reviving after he started being more careful with his public political statements. "I call this balance 'rational maturity,' which is required in both politics and music," Mr. Cui says.

On the Internet, Chinese bloggers now write freely about once-taboo subjects. One popular blogger known as Mu Zimei discusses her sexual exploits, and even produced a long audio podcast capturing a sexual encounter.

Within the gray-zone community, filmmakers are especially active and influential. In recent years, a handful of Chinese filmmakers such as Zhang Yimou, director of 2002's Academy Award nominee "Hero," have won explicit government approval for their projects and found international commercial success. Beijing still turns a blind eye to a thriving world of underground filmmakers to which Mr. Zhang used to belong, who deal with edgy topics and don't submit to censor boards.

These filmmakers, like Mr. Wu, shoot films with inexpensive digital- video cameras, which they edit on computers and distribute at universities, film festivals and commercial DVD outlets. While not successful on a mass scale, they have a devoted following among China's university-educated elite.

One such filmmaker, 48-year-old Cui Zi'en, has built a career out of pushing the gray zone's limits. A professor at the Beijing Film Academy, and an acquaintance of Mr. Wu, Mr. Cui has produced films about gay aliens, prostitution and incest -- themes that run counter to the conservative cultural mores of the Chinese Communist party.

Mr. Cui says he has been banned from lecturing at the film academy, though he can still perform research. He uses his connections and understanding of Chinese regulations to continue making and distributing films. While police sometimes question Mr. Cui after he visits overseas film festivals, he says they've only once stopped his filming, at a gay rights rally in Beijing.

Mr. Wu, the arrested filmmaker, by contrast, wasn't the sort to play provocateur. Born in the city of Chengdu in western China, Mr. Wu grew up fascinated by American pop culture, his friends say. In 1992, he moved to America to study cell biology at Brandeis University and stayed to earn an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan. Having adopted America as his home, Mr. Wu hosted Thanksgiving meals with turkey and trimmings for other overseas students, his business school friends say. Later, he landed a job in Los Angeles as a senior product manager at EarthLink Inc., an Internet-service provider.

After moving to Los Angeles and meeting others in the film business, he began dreaming about a career in Chinese film, his friends say. In 2003, he gave up his job at EarthLink to work on his own scripts. Friends say Mr. Wu, a perfectionist, relentlessly polished a screenplay called "The Good Students" about kids growing up in China in the 1980s who were infatuated with American break dancing.

In 2004, he moved to Beijing and worked as a filmmaker. His film "Beijing or Bust" featured American-born Chinese who moved to China's capital and, like Mr. Wu were pursuing a future there. The film showed last September at a film festival held by the San Diego Asian Film Foundation.

Mr. Wu holds a green card but hasn't yet received U.S. citizenship, according to his friends. "His dream is for speaking out freely, and for making films . . . to let people in other countries see what was really happening in China," says his sister Nina Wu, in a March interview. Ms. Wu, a mutual-fund manager in Shanghai, quit her job recently to pursue her brother's release full time. "He knows there are some problems here but he loves China and thinks things are getting better and better."

Far-flung friends kept track of Mr. Wu's exploits by reading his blog, at beijingorbust.blogspot.com. Under the pen names "Beijing Loafer" and "Tian Yi," he wrote about arguments with his mother and his experience working as a translator on the set of the Naomi Watts and Edward Norton film, "The Painted Veil." He also wrote about the frustrations of confronting bureaucrats during his underground-church project.

He became known among bloggers for defending the Chinese government against Western calls for more freedom. In February, he took a job as North Asia editor of Global Voices Online.

Mr. Wu took pains to distance himself from the subjects of his film about churches. On his blog, he described himself as a staunch atheist -- safe ground in Communist China -- and often disagreed with the politics of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline banned in China.

Still, he was taking on a controversial subject. China recognizes only religious groups registered by government-sanctioned bodies, such as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, China Christian Council and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. None of these groups recognize authority beyond the Chinese government, such as the Vatican. Lawyers representing detained underground-church leaders say crackdowns are increasing. Several members of international news organizations have been temporarily detained for contacting underground churches.

On several occasions, Mr. Wu's blog postings suggest he understood he was flirting with the edge of the gray zone. He had been in contact with Gao Zhisheng, a controversial Chinese lawyer specializing in human-rights cases, especially on behalf of Christians worshipping without approval and practitioners of Falun Gong. Late last year, Mr. Gao's Shengzhi Law Office was closed for a year by Chinese authorities and he says he is constantly followed and harassed by the government.

In a Dec. 23 blog post, Mr. Wu described meeting Mr. Gao at a Beijing party and discussing working together on a documentary about Mr. Gao's efforts. He taped a two-hour interview with the lawyer at his office.

"It suddenly dawned on me -- to continue filming him would drag me into a very political situation which could lead into real trouble," he wrote. "But not to continue meant all my previous emoting over the poor and the less fortunate had been just empty mental exercise over Starbucks lattes." Mr. Gao confirms that both encounters happened, and says the two had been in phone contact days before Mr. Wu was arrested. They planned to meet on Feb. 22. That meeting never took place after Mr. Gao advised against it, Mr. Gao says.

On another occasion, Mr. Wu details in his blog a short confrontation with the police over his work. His friends corroborate the account of the incident. While he was filming worshipers in a makeshift high-rise church in January, four officers showed up and began arguing with the congregants about the legality of the gathering. Mr. Wu kept filming the event, until the police demanded that he stop and, after threatening to destroy his camera, took his tape.

He later went to a police station to ask for the tape but didn't succeed in getting it back, his friends say.

Some friends and readers who posted comments on his blog expressed concern about Mr. Wu's safety. Mr. Wu wrote: "Call me naive, but I don't think the police would bother any one who's not famous or about to attract some kind of attention."

After that comment, a long-time Chinese friend wrote: "Be careful man, I hope to see your name in newspaper under the Art or Movie categories, not the Politics or Obituaries categories."

Friends say Mr. Wu felt he was protected by his own journalistic standards. "He really believed that because he himself was being objective about all of this, that he wasn't doing any harm. He wasn't supporting any particular group that China has a problem with -- he was just filming their views," says a Western friend who has known Mr. Wu since the filmmaker arrived in Beijing.

On the day he was detained, Mr. Wu planned to meet his friend Thomas Fan at the gym at 5 p.m. When he didn't show, Mr. Fan says he sent Mr. Wu several text messages. His friends spent the next several days trying to piece together his disappearance.

On Friday, Feb. 24, Mr. Wu's editing equipment and several videotapes were removed from his apartment. One of his closest friends has been interrogated three times since his detention and was asked to explain where Mr. Wu acquired funding for his film projects. Mr. Wu's friends say his Beijing filmmaking was paid for with money saved from work in the U.S. and from odd jobs.

After hearing of the arrest, Mr. Wu's sister Nina Wu flew to Beijing. During her initial encounter with police, Ms. Wu said she remembered being told that Mr. Wu would be released in a few days after they made sure he was not involved in a crime. The police advised her not to hire a lawyer and to keep the case quiet, she said.

Then in early March, Ms. Wu received a three-minute phone call from her brother. "He seemed not to speak freely," she said that month. She remembered he spoke only Chinese, which was odd because the two often mix English in their conversations. "He wanted me to go back to my normal life and said don't worry too much." He also told her that he didn't want a lawyer. He called two other times, on later days, from an unlisted phone number, but said no more than he had on the first call, she said.

In March, she hired a lawyer from the firm run by one of Beijing's top human-rights lawyers, Zhang Sizhi. The lawyer says the police won't let him see Mr. Wu because officials denied the family's application for him to be represented by a lawyer.

They decided to go public about his case after exhausting private negotiations, Mr. Wu's sister said. The Global Voices Online team has put together a Web site dedicated to his case, www.freehaowu.org. The site can't be easily reached inside China.

"I don't think he will change his mind about China" after this ordeal, said Ms. Wu after she first went public. "He went to America at a young age and learned to analyze things like American people. But he is still Chinese."

Jul 3, 2006. pg. A.1

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