MCLC: busting bloggers

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: busting bloggers
**********************************************************

Source: NYT (10/15/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/opinion/murong-busting-chinas-bloggers.ht
ml?emc=edit_tnt_20131015&tntemail0=y

Busting China’s Bloggers
Murong Xuecun

BEIJING — A frequent topic of conversation among my friends here has been:
Who will be arrested next?

Some of us met recently for dinner and started a list of potential
candidates. We included outspoken scholars, writers and lawyers who have
discussed democracy and freedom, criticized the government and spoken out
for the disadvantaged.

Some of my dinner companions nominated themselves for the list. We agreed
that the social critic Xiao Shu (the pen name of Chen Min) and Guo Yushan,
a friend of the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng (now in the United States),
should top the list. I’m right behind them.

Almost of all of us are active microbloggers. Some of us qualify as Big V,
the widely used label for influential bloggers with millions of followers.
(V stands for “verified account.”) It is our online activism that makes us
prime targets of the government.

In August, the authorities launched the most severe round yet in their
“campaign against cybercrime.” Ostensibly to curtail online “rumors,” they
are rounding up and jailing outspoken netizens across the country. Judging
from official media accounts and police reports, the number of arrests is
in the hundreds, and many of us believe it may be in the thousands.

Charles Xue, a government critic and a Big V blogger with 12 million
followers, who writes under the name Xue Manzi, was arrested as an early
high-profile example. He was detained in August for allegedly hiring
prostitutes, but the state-run news agency, Xinhua, made clear the true
reason: “This has sounded a warning bell about the law to all Big V’s on
the Internet.” The most infamous case was the arrest of a 16-year-old boy
in Gansu Province. In early September, he posted two short messages
commenting on the police’s handling of a mysterious death. His message
included the phrase: “All officials shield one another.” He was arrested a
few days later.

Meanwhile, the state media have published a steady flow of articles
warning microbloggers to tone down their commentaries. An Aug. 24
editorial on Xinhua’s Web site said that popular bloggers who “poison the
online environment” should be “dealt with like rats scurrying across the
street that everyone wants to kill.”

It’s easy to see why the government feels threatened. The most popular
microblogging service, Sina’s Weibo, has more than 500 million registered
members and 54 million daily users, and has become the most important
space for citizens to participate in public life — and expose government
lies. Microbloggers dare to question the legitimacy of the one-party
state. They expose corruption. They shame criminals.

And Big V bloggers don’t just express opinions; we act as information
hubs. When we discuss issues online, people take notice. In 2010, I
re-posted a news item about a protest against a forced eviction in Jiangxi
Province in which three people resorted to self-immolation. The story was
re-posted thousands of times and became one of the hottest news items of
the year.

The vast state censorship apparatus works hard to keep us down. But posts
race through Weibo so quickly that it’s difficult to control them with
technology. Hence, the government is resorting to detainment.

The effect has been chilling. Since August, the Weibo community has
collectively cooled down the political speech. The historian Zhang Lifan
and others have dubbed the crackdown the “Internet anti-rightist
campaign,” an echo of the anti-rightist campaign instigated by Mao in the
late 1950s to crush dissent. Nearly 550,000 people were arrested or sent
into exile. Just over a half-century later, the term “anti-rightist” still
triggers fears that Chinese people have been trying to forget. And that is
one of the government’s aims: to instil fear.

But these are different times. In 1957, Chinese intellectuals were on
their own. They were defenseless and received no public support. In 2013,
the Internet is like a giant public square where citizens can hear and
support one another. Otherwise powerless people join together. When a
courageous person steps forward, others follow.

I have been asked if I’m afraid. A couple of years ago, in the early days
of my blogging, I was scared. Now I am not. I think my shift is
representative of that of many popular bloggers, who have been emboldened
by the freedom we’ve found online, as my friends have.

My friends and I channel our lingering anxiety into jokes about being on a
government hit list. But of course this is a serious matter — and really
all we can do is prepare for the inevitable.

For example, Xiao Han, a legal scholar in Beijing, has prepared a
statement to be released in the event of his arrest, and sent a copy to
his friends overseas. And he has preemptively decided on a courtroom
strategy: If he is charged with disturbing public order or manufacturing
rumors, he says he will counter-sue the government for its crimes and
declare, “This is my court, too.”

The most I’ve done in preparation for arrest is to back up all my writing
and give a copy to friends overseas.

As we contemplate the government’s next target, I keep my fear in check. I
understand that for China to change, some people will have to pay a price.
Wang Xiaoshan, a publisher who was among my friends at the dinner, put it
best when he said: Start with me.

Murong Xuecun, the pen name of Hao Qun, is a novelist whose books include
“Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu” and “Dancing Through Red Dust.” This
article was translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz from the
Chinese.