MCLC: how Chongqing people view Bo Xiali (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Guangyi Li <frankfirepku at gmail.com>
Subject: how Chongqing people view Bo Xilai (1)
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This essay gave us an impression that Bo's dissenters in Chongqing on
average are better educated and informed than his supporters because, the
former group consists of "local intellectuals, professionals, and the
middle class," while the latter is mostly composed by housewives, retired
workers, 'stick men,' and taxi drivers." As another Chongqing native, I
don't think this is a balanced picture of real Chongqing.

The largest online forums of Chongqing, Jingdian chongqing/Classic
Chongqing (http://bbs.classic023.com/forum.php) and the baidu forum
(tieba) of Chongqing, were both famous for their undisguised support for
Bo and hence shut down after March 15 more than once. Many forum users,
especially those in the first forum, are local professionals and college
students, well-educated and energetic. They spent a great deal of time
discussing Bo's reform. Unlike the intellectuals mentioned in Xujun's
essay, they are more concerned with how Bo's effort facilitated and
accelerated Chongqing's development and what else can be done to bring a
better future to their hometown. To understand what happened in Chongqing,
we need to pay due attention to this group of Bo's advocates.

Guangyi