Preparing to Step Aside in China, Hu Jintao Warns of Challenges

Changing of the Guard in China:
The New York Times’s Beijing correspondents discuss the challenges ahead for China as the country begins its once-in-a-decade leadership transition.

BEIJING — Capping 10 careful years at the helm of the Communist Party, China’s top leader, Hu Jintao, on Thursday boasted of successes during his tenure while issuing a blunt warning against unrest and political reform.

Mr. Hu, 69, is to step down as the party’s general secretary next week, handing over power to his designated successor, Xi Jinping. His speech at the opening here in Beijing of the Communist Party’s 18th Congress was likely to be his last major address — a chance to write his own eulogy while also setting the course for Mr. Xi.

“He’s worried about how history will view him,” said Qian Gang, who works with the China Media Project of Hong Kong University. “On the whole, he is against reform.”

Formally, Mr. Hu nodded to almost every manner of reform: economic, social, political and environmental. But, in the fashion of his predecessors, this was balanced with warnings of the need to guard against a rise in unrest. It was an unusual admission for a man whose signature slogan is creating for China a “harmonious society.”

“Social contradictions have clearly increased,” said the formal 64-page document issued at the congress. (Mr. Hu’s speech, even at 100 minutes, was only a summary.)

“There are many problems concerning the public’s immediate interests in education, employment, social security, health care, housing, the environment, food and drug safety, workplace safety, public security and law enforcement.”

The solution, Mr. Hu said, was “reform and opening up,” a policy initiated by the man who chose him for the job nearly two decades ago, the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping.

Mr. Hu also lauded his own contribution to Communist Party ideology: “Scientific Development.” Most of his predecessors have had their own ideologies enshrined as guiding state doctrines. His repetition of the phrase — which means that the party should be pragmatic and follow policies that are demonstrably effective — implied that he, too, would be so honored.

But his caveats to reform were many.

According to Mr. Qian, a leading expert on textual analysis of Chinese leaders’ speeches, Mr. Hu’s speech hit on almost every anti-reform phrase used by Chinese Communist leaders.

He referred to Communist China’s founder three times with the phrase “Mao Zedong Thought,” and said the party must “resolutely not follow Western political systems,” something not mentioned at the last party congress five years ago.

“They don’t say these terms lightly,” Mr. Qian said. “When they mention it, it matters.”

Mr. Hu also coined a new term, pledging that the party will not to follow the “wicked way” of changing the party’s course.

Mr. Hu’s speech is thought to have been drawn up in cooperation with his successor, Mr. Xi. While Mr. Xi is widely thought to be consulting with liberal members of China’s intelligentsia, he either did not oppose Mr. Hu’s direction or was not able to change it.

That is important, observers say, because Mr. Xi will not exercise unrestrained power when he takes over. Besides the other half-dozen members on the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo, he will also have to listen to the advice of Mr. Hu, Mr. Hu’s own predecessor, Jiang Zemin, and an estimated 20 other “senior leaders.” As if to emphasize their role, these men were seated on the dais next to Mr. Hu. Many of them are in their 70s and 80s and have exercised power for decades.

“Xi Jinping certainly won’t be a Gorbachev,” said Yao Jianfu, a former official and researcher who closely follows Chinese politics and advocates democratic change. “Every aspect of reform has an important precondition — that the Communist Party remains in charge.”

Even though Mr. Hu’s speech was broadcast live on national television and on screens in Beijing subway cars, gauging popular opinion was difficult.

Microbloggers, who are mostly urban and fairly well educated, at times cast scorn on the rhetoric. One blogger listed the Marxist terminology that Mr. Hu used and wrote simply “madness.” Others used laughing emoticons, while some delved closely into the speech for clues to new policies — some noted his fleeting mention of China’s unpopular single-child policy.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

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NHL, union hold labor talks a 3rd straight day

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the players' association return to the bargaining table Thursday, the third straight day the sides are meeting in an effort to end the lockout.

The work stoppage reached its 54th day, and this week is considered critical for the hockey season to be saved. The lockout is threatening to force the second cancellation of an NHL season in seven years.

Even if an agreement is reached soon, it isn't clear if any of this season's games that have been called off through Nov. 30 can be rescheduled. The NHL, however, has said a full 82-game season won't be played.

Owners and players already have bargained for about 13 hours over two days this week at an undisclosed site in New York. Little information about the talks has been disclosed by either side.

Thursday afternoon's talks will mark the fourth time in six days that face-to-face negotiations have taken place after both sides rejected proposals Oct. 18. The lockout, which began Sept. 16 after the collective bargaining agreement expired, has forced the cancellation of 327 regular-season games, including the New Year's Day Winter Classic in Michigan.

A second consecutive day of marathon negotiations took place Wednesday, when the sides spent more than five hours discussing the most contentious issues. Coupled with the more than seven hours they spent negotiating Tuesday, owners and players have been together about 13 hours.

"We do not intend to comment on the substance or subject matter," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement.

NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr said the parties met to "discuss many of the key issues," but did not elaborate.

Those issues include revenue sharing between teams and the "make-whole" provision, which involves the payment of player contracts that are already in effect. There is still much to be done to work out the differences to reach a deal that will allow the already delayed and shortened season to begin.

Along with a handful of team owners, eight players attended Wednesday's talks, five fewer than Tuesday. Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby and others left New York to try to avoid the impending snowstorm that hit the area, the union said.

In October, the players' association responded to an NHL offer with three of its own, but all of those were quickly dismissed by the league. That led to nearly three weeks without face-to-face discussions, although the parties kept in regular contact by phone.

Both sides have made proposals that included a 50-50 split of hockey-related revenues. The NHL has moved toward the players' side in the "make-whole" provision and whose share of the economic pie that money will come from.

Other core economic issues — mainly the split of hockey-related revenue — along with contract lengths, arbitration and free agency also must be agreed upon.

The union accepted a salary cap in the previous labor pact, which wasn't reached until after the entire 2004-05 season was canceled because of a lockout. The union doesn't want to absorb the majority of concessions this time after the NHL had record revenue that exceeded $3 billion last season.

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Well: The Presidential Health Quiz

Whether it’s George Washington’s teeth or Bill Clinton’s former hamburger habit, Americans have always been fascinated by the health of the president and presidential candidates.

With help from the Web site DoctorZebra, which has compiled an exhaustive list of the medical history of American presidents, we’ve created an Election Day quiz to test your knowledge of presidential fitness and health.

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DealBook: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama

Del Frisco’s, an expensive steakhouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston harbor, was a festive scene on Tuesday evening. The hedge fund billionaires Steven A. Cohen, Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb were among the titans of finance there dining among the gray velvet banquettes before heading several blocks away to what they hoped would be a victory party for their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The next morning was a cold, sobering one for these executives.

Few industries have made such a one-sided bet as Wall Street did in opposing President Obama and supporting his Republican rival. The top five sources of contributions to Mr. Romney, a former top private equity executive, were big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Wealthy financiers — led by hedge fund investors — were the biggest group of givers to the main “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney, providing almost $33 million, and gave generously to outside groups in races around the country.

On Wednesday, Mr. Loeb, who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008, was sanguine. “You win some, you lose some,” he said in an interview. “We can all disagree. I have friends and we have spirited discussions. Sure, I am not getting invited to the White House anytime soon, but as citizens of the country we are all friendly.”

Wall Street, however, now has to come to terms with an administration it has vilified. What Washington does next will be critically important for the industry, as regulatory agencies work to put their final stamp on financial regulations and as tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect in the new year unless a deal to avert them is reached. To not have a friend in the White House at this time is one thing, but to have an enemy is quite another.

“Wall Street is now going to have to figure out how to make this relationship work,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst who follows the big banks for the investment bank Nomura. “It’s not impossible, but it’s not the starting point they had hoped for.”

Traditionally, the financial industry has tended to support Republican candidates, but, being pragmatic about power, has also donated to Democrats. That script got a rewrite in 2008, when many on Wall Street supported Mr. Obama as an intelligent leader for a country reeling from the financial crisis. Goldman employees were the leading source of campaign donations for Mr. Obama, who reaped far more contributions — roughly $16 million — from Wall Street than did his opponent, John McCain.

The love affair between Wall Street and Mr. Obama soured soon after he took office and championed an overhaul in financial regulations that became the Dodd-Frank Act.

Some financial executives complained that in meetings with the president, they found him uninterested and disengaged, while others on Wall Street never forgave Mr. Obama for calling them “fat cats.”

The disillusionment with the president spawned reams of critical commentary from Wall Street executives.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote in one letter to his investors.

The rhetoric at times became extreme, like the time Steven A. Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, compared a tax proposal to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” (Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the remark.)

Mr. Loeb was not alone in switching allegiances in the recent presidential race. Hedge fund executives like Leon Cooperman who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008 were big backers of Mr. Romney in 2012. And Wall Street chieftains like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who have publicly been Democrats in the past, kept a low profile during this election. But their firms’ employees gave money to Mr. Romney in waves.

Starting over with the Obama White House will not be easy. One senior Wall Street lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wall Street “made a bad mistake” in pushing so hard for Mr. Romney. “They are going to pay a price,” he said. “It will soften over time, but there will be a price.”

Mr. Obama is not without supporters on Wall Street. Prominent executives like Hamilton James of Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, a former top banker at UBS, were in Chicago on Tuesday night, celebrating with the president.

“What we learned is the people on Wall Street have one vote just like everyone else,” Mr. Wolf said. Still, while the support Wall Street gave Mr. Romney is undeniable, Mr. Wolf said, “Mr. Obama wants a healthy private sector, and that includes Wall Street.

“If you look at fiscal reform, infrastructure, immigration and education, they are all bipartisan issues and are more aligned than some people make it seem.”

Reshma Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer who was among Mr. Obama’s top bundlers this year and is planning to run for city office next year, agreed.

“Most people in the financial services sector are social liberals who support gay marriage and believe in a woman’s right to choose, so I think many of them will swing back to Democrats in the future,” she said.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 8, 2012

An earlier version of this article misidentified Reshma Saujani as a male.

A version of this article appeared in print on 11/08/2012, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama.

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Obama’s Other ‘Cliff’ Is in Foreign Policy

For all the talk of a “fiscal cliff” threatening the nation’s finances, President Obama also faces a foreign policy cliff of sorts, with a welter of national security issues that he put on the back burner during the campaign now clamoring for his attention.

Atop that list, administration officials and foreign policy experts say, is the bloody civil war in Syria and the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program. The United States is likely to engage the Iranian government in direct negotiations over the next few months, in perhaps a last-ditch diplomatic effort to head off a military strike on its nuclear facilities.

Administration officials said that they had not set a date for talks and that they did not know if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would give his blessing. But with Iran’s uranium centrifuges spinning and Israel threatening its own military action, the need to avoid a war may make this high-risk diplomatic effort Mr. Obama’s No. 1 priority.

Syria, too, will demand a pressing response, given the high human toll of the violence and the danger of a spreading regional conflict. Mr. Obama, however, remains leery of being dragged into the conflict, rejecting calls to supply weapons to rebel groups. His reluctance has been partly political, experts say, but he also has strategic qualms.

“At a time when he was running on a platform of ending wars in the Middle East, he did not want to be seen as starting one,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel.

“But if he doesn’t try to intervene in a way that gives him a way to shape a post-Assad regime on the ground,” Mr. Indyk continued, referring to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, “there’s a high risk of descent into chaos in Syria, and a sectarian war that spreads to Lebanon, Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia.”

Beyond those flash points, the president will have to grapple with Pakistan, an unstable nuclear state whose relationship with Washington has eroded during his presidency. And he will have to oversee an orderly exit from Afghanistan, where the waning American role threatens to throw the country back into chaos and Islamic militancy.

As he does so, some question whether he will rethink his administration’s heavy reliance on drone strikes to kill people suspected of being extremists, a policy that has proved lethally efficient but has sown deep resentment in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

More broadly, Mr. Obama will face Russia under the aggressive leadership of President Vladimir V. Putin and China with the opposite problem — negotiating a tumultuous change in power after a scandal that tainted the top ranks of its Communist leadership.

None of these problems are new, but many were effectively shelved over the past year as the president waged a bitter re-election battle dominated by his stewardship of the economy. Foreign policy played such a bit part in the election that even in the debate ostensibly devoted to it, Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney detoured into a discussion of high school test scores in Massachusetts.

For reasons of history and political reality, a re-elected Mr. Obama is likely to devote more time to foreign affairs. From Richard M. Nixon to Bill Clinton, presidents have tended to make their bid for statesman status in their second terms. The prospect of continuing gridlock — with the Republicans still controlling the House — gives Mr. Obama all the more reason to favor diplomacy over domestic legislation.

There is also some unfinished business from the past four years, not least Mr. Obama’s frustrated efforts to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But several experts cast doubt on whether the president would throw himself into the role of Middle East peacemaker, as Mr. Clinton did in his second term.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had a fraught relationship with Mr. Obama, faces his own voters early next year, but he seems likely to stay in power with a right-wing government. Such an arrangement could make peacemaking difficult.

“Because he got his fingers burned and was outmaneuvered by Netanyahu, he will wait to see the outcome in the Israeli election,” said Mr. Indyk, who wrote a book about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, “Bending History.” He added that the president is “going to think long and hard about trying again.”

The added wrinkle for the United States: the Palestinian Authority is likely to petition for nonstate membership in the United Nations next month, a step it had put off until after the election. If the United Nations were to grant it, that would trigger Congress to cut off aid not only to the Palestinian Authority but also to the United Nations itself.

The mere fact of Mr. Obama’s victory does not ease these problems. But as the president himself famously said to Russia’s former president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, at a nuclear conference in South Korea, he may have more room to maneuver in dealing with them.

Ask foreign policy experts for wild cards in a second Obama term and two countries come up: India and Cuba. Little progress was made in opening the door to Havana during the past four years, but hope springs eternal for those who advocate an end to the half-century-old trade embargo. Mr. Obama also is likely to build on his ties to India.

India figures into the biggest geopolitical bet of Mr. Obama’s presidency: the American pivot from the Middle East to China and Asia. With four more years, experts said, Mr. Obama can put meat on the bones of an ambitious, but incomplete, policy.

Here, however, is where the fiscal cliff meets foreign policy. To be credible in reasserting an American presence in Asia, experts said, will require a robust military presence from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. But unless the White House and Congress can strike some kind of fiscal deal, the Pentagon will face deep automatic cuts in its budget, depriving it of the ability to project power as it once did.

For Mr. Obama to realize his grandest visions abroad, then, he will still have to work with the same House Republicans who thwarted him on the home front in his first term.

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Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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End in sight? NHL, players bargain deep into night

NEW YORK (AP) — The NHL and the players' association did all their talking at the bargaining table, far away from the public eye. With another round of talks scheduled just one day after more than seven hours of negotiations, perhaps progress is being made.

There was already common ground before negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement began Tuesday and lasted deep into the night. The players' union adhered to the league's request to keep the meeting location in New York a secret, and with no outside distractions, the sides talked and talked from afternoon until night.

Once they broke for the day, neither side gave any hint of what was discussed or if progress was made, but both pointed to the next round of talks.

"With meetings scheduled to resume Wednesday, the league will not characterize the substance or detail of the discussions until their conclusion," NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said in a statement.

The marathon session highlighted Day 52 of the lockout and provided at least a glimmer of hope that maybe it will end soon.

Daly and union special counsel Steve Fehr, who conducted a long one-on-one session on Saturday, were joined on Tuesday by Commissioner Gary Bettman, NHLPA executive director Donald Fehr, a handful of team owners, and 13 players including Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, who has been an active participant in the process.

The union did its talking Tuesday before negotiations began.

"We're hopeful that we'll start bargaining and we'll continue bargaining until we find a way to make a deal," Donald Fehr said early Tuesday afternoon. "Sometimes that goes in rather long sessions with short breaks and sometimes you take a few hours or half a day or a day to work on things before you come back together. I don't know which it will be.

"We certainly hope we'll be continuing to meet on a regular basis. I hope they do, too. I'm just not making any predictions."

His hope was met — at least for one day.

Fehr's brother, Steve, met with Daly on Saturday in a secret location, and neither provided many details of what was discussed, but both agreed that the meeting was productive. That was proven when the sides agreed to quickly meet again Tuesday. Until Saturday, there had been no negotiations since talks broke off Oct. 18.

"The players' view has always been to keep negotiating until we find a way to get agreement and you sort of stay at it day by day, so it's very good to be getting back to the table," Donald Fehr said. "We hope that this time it produces more progress than we've seen in the past, and that we can find a way to make an agreement and to get the game back on the ice as soon as possible.

"We're hopeful that we'll start bargaining and we'll continue bargaining until we find a way to make a deal."

Time is becoming a bigger factor every day a deal isn't reached. The lockout, which went into effect Sept. 16 after the previous collective bargaining agreement expired, has already forced the cancellation of 327 regular-season games — including the New Year's Day outdoor Winter Classic in Michigan.

Whether any of the games that have been called off through Nov. 30 can be rescheduled if an agreement is made soon hasn't been determined. But the NHL has already said that a full 82-game season won't be played.

Back in October, the players' association responded to an NHL offer with three of its own, but all of those were quickly dismissed by the league — leading to nearly three weeks without face-to-face discussions. Daly and Steve Fehr kept in regular contact by phone and agreed to meet again last weekend.

The NHL has moved toward the players' side in the contentious issue of the "make-whole" provision, which involves the payment of player contracts that are already in effect and whose share of the economic pie that money will come from.

Other core economic issues — mainly the split of hockey-related revenue — along with contract lengths, arbitration and free agency will also need to be agreed upon before a deal can be reached.

The players' association accepted a salary cap in the previous CBA, which wasn't reached until after the entire 2004-05 season was canceled because of a lockout. The union doesn't want to absorb the majority of concessions this time after the NHL recorded record revenue that exceeded $3 billion last season.

"The issues the players are concerned about remain the same," Donald Fehr said. "The players haven't seen any need to go backward, given the history of the last negotiations and given the level of revenue increase since then. Player-contracting rights are very important to them.

"Before we have any agreement, both sides have to see everything on paper and make sure that they all understand it right. That's about all I can say about it at this stage. I don't want to prejudge or indicate that I have any particular impressions or expectations. That's what the meetings are for."

Read More..

Alarm Over India’s Dengue Fever Epidemic

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A man at the Yamuna River, an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Filthy standing water abounds in New Delhi. More Photos »

NEW DELHI — An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people, not just in India but around the world.

India has become the focal point for a mosquito-borne plague that is sweeping the globe. Reported in just a handful of countries in the 1950s, dengue (pronounced DEN-gay) is now endemic in half the world’s nations.

“The global dengue problem is far worse than most people know, and it keeps getting worse,” said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, the World Health Organization’s lead dengue coordinator.

The tropical disease, though life-threatening for a tiny fraction of those infected, can be extremely painful. Growing numbers of Western tourists are returning from warm-weather vacations with the disease, which has reached the shores of the United States and Europe. Last month, health officials in Miami announced a case of locally acquired dengue infection.

Here in India’s capital, where areas of standing water contribute to the epidemic’s growth, hospitals are overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways. At Kalawati Saran Hospital, a pediatric facility, a large crowd of relatives lay on mats and blankets under the shade of a huge banyan tree outside the hospital entrance recently.

Among them was Neelam, who said her two grandchildren were deathly ill inside. Eight-year-old Sneha got the disease first, followed by Tanya, 7, she said. The girls’ parents treated them at home but then Sneha’s temperature rose to 104 degrees, a rash spread across her legs and shoulders, and her pain grew unbearable.

“Sneha has been given five liters of blood,” said Neelam, who has one name. “It is terrible.”

Officials say that 30,002 people in India had been sickened with dengue fever through October, a 59 percent jump from the 18,860 recorded for all of 2011. But the real number of Indians who get dengue fever annually is in the millions, several experts said.

“I’d conservatively estimate that there are 37 million dengue infections occurring every year in India, and maybe 227,500 hospitalizations,” said Dr. Scott Halstead, a tropical disease expert focused on dengue research.

A senior Indian government health official, who agreed to speak about the matter only on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that official figures represent a mere sliver of dengue’s actual toll. The government only counts cases of dengue that come from public hospitals and that have been confirmed by laboratories, the official said. Such a census, “which was deliberated at the highest levels,” is a small subset that is nonetheless informative and comparable from one year to the next, he said.

“There is no denying that the actual number of cases would be much, much higher,” the official said. “Our interest has not been to arrive at an exact figure.”

The problem with that policy, said Dr. Manish Kakkar, a specialist at the Public Health Foundation of India, is that India’s “massive underreporting of cases” has contributed to the disease’s spread. Experts from around the world said that India’s failure to construct an adequate dengue surveillance system has impeded awareness of the illness’s vast reach, discouraged efforts to clean up the sources of the disease and slowed the search for a vaccine.

“When you look at the number of reported cases India has, it’s a joke,” said Dr. Harold S. Margolis, chief of the dengue branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Neighboring Sri Lanka, for instance, reported nearly three times as many dengue cases as India through August, according to the World Health Organization, even though India’s population is 60 times larger.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

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Egyptian Vigilantes Crack Down on Abuse of Women

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A self-appointed citizens patrol that tries to protect women on Cairo’s streets spray-painted a youth for identification last month.

CAIRO — The young activists lingered on the streets around Tahrir Square, scrutinizing the crowds of holiday revelers. Suddenly, they charged, pushing people aside and chasing down a young man. As the captive thrashed to get away, the activists pounded his shoulders, flipped him around and spray-painted a message on his back: “I’m a harasser.”

Egypt’s streets have long been a perilous place for women, who are frequently heckled, grabbed, threatened and violated while the police look the other way. Now, during the country’s tumultuous transition from authoritarian rule, more and more groups are emerging to make protecting women — and shaming the do-nothing police — a cause.

“They’re now doing the undoable?” a police officer joked as he watched the vigilantes chase down the young man. The officer quickly went back to sipping his tea.

The attacks on women did not subside after the uprising. If anything, they became more visible as even the military was implicated in the assaults, stripping female protesters, threatening others with violence and subjecting activists to so-called virginity tests. During holidays, when Cairenes take to the streets to stroll and socialize, the attacks multiply.

But during the recent Id al-Adha holiday, some of the men were surprised to find they could no longer harass with impunity, a change brought about not just out of concern for women’s rights, but out of a frustration that the post-revolutionary government still, like the one before, was doing too little to protect its citizens.

At least three citizens groups patrolled busy sections of central Cairo during the holiday. The groups’ members, both men and women, shared the conviction that the authorities would not act against harassment unless the problem was forced into the public debate. They differed in their tactics: some activists criticized others for being too quick to resort to violence against suspects and encouraging vigilantism.  One group leader compared the activists to the Guardian Angels in the United States.

“The harasser doesn’t see anyone who will hold him accountable,” said Omar Talaat, 16, who joined one of the patrols.

The years of President Hosni Mubarak’s rule were marked by official apathy, collusion in the assaults on women, or empty responses to the attacks, including police roundups of teenagers at Internet cafes for looking at pornography.

“The police did not take harassment seriously,” said Madiha el-Safty, a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo. “People didn’t file complaints. It was always underreported.”

Mr. Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne, who portrayed herself as a champion of women’s rights, pretended the problem hardly existed. As reports of harassment grew in 2008, she said, “Egyptian men always respect Egyptian women.”

Egypt’s new president, Mohamed Morsi, has presided over two holidays, and many activists say there is no sign that the government is paying closer attention to the problem. But the work by the citizens groups may be having an effect: Last week, after the Id al-Adha holiday, Mr. Morsi’s spokesman announced that the government had received more than 1,000 reports of harassment, and said that the president had directed the Interior Ministry to investigate them.

“Egypt’s revolution cannot tolerate these abuses,” the spokesman quoted Mr. Morsi as saying.

Azza Soliman, the director of the Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, dismissed the president’s words as “weak.” During the holiday, she said, one of her sons was beaten on the subway after he tried to stop a man who was groping two foreign women. The police tried to stop him from filing a complaint. “The whole world is talking about harassment in our country,” Ms. Soliman said. “The Interior Ministry takes no action.”

For years, anti-harassment activists have worked to highlight the problems in Egypt, but the uprising seemed to give the effort more energy and urgency.

Asmaa Al Zohairy contributed reporting.

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