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<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2015/07/27/picking-quarrels-law/" target="_blank">‘Picking quarrels’ law</a></h3>
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<p>Source: NYT (7/26/15)<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/world/asia/china-uses-picking-quarrels-charge-to-cast-a-wider-net-online.html">China Uses ‘Picking Quarrels’ Charge to Cast a Wider Net Online</a><br />
By EDWARD WONG</p>
<p id="story-continues-1" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="394" data-total-count="394">DUNHUANG, China — An oil-field worker in this Gobi Desert town posted poetry online memorializing the victims of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. An artist in Shanghai uploaded satirical photographs of his wincing visage superimposed on a portrait of the Chinese president. A civil rights lawyer in Beijing wrote microblog posts criticizing the Communist Party’s handling of ethnic tensions.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="198" data-total-count="592">In each case, the men were detained under a broad new interpretation of an established law that the Chinese authorities are using to carry out the biggest crackdown on Internet speech in many years.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="304" data-total-count="896">Artists, essayists, lawyers, bloggers and others deemed to be online troublemakers have been hauled into police stations and investigated or imprisoned for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge that was once confined to physical activities like handing out fliers or organizing protests.</p>
<p id="story-continues-2" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="239" data-total-count="1135">The increasing use of that law to police online speech, which appears to have become more common in recent months, is a piece of President <a title="More articles about Xi Jinping." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/x/xi_jinping/index.html?inline=nyt-per">Xi Jinping</a>’s strategy to deploy the legal code <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/world/asia/chinese-national-security-law-aims-to-defend-party-grip-on-power.html">to silence dissent and clamp down on civil society</a>.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="290" data-total-count="1425">Since a Communist Party conclave last October, when Mr. Xi and other leaders <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/asia/china-moves-to-enact-rule-of-law-with-caveats.html?_r=0">emphasized “rule of law,”</a> the government has introduced a series of <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/world/asia/china-approves-sweeping-security-law-bolstering-communist-rule.html">new laws</a> to <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/world/asia/chinese-national-security-law-aims-to-defend-party-grip-on-power.html?_r=0">tighten the vise over civil society</a> and rein in foreign organizations, which the party fears could help foment a revolution here.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="247" data-total-count="1672">“The core of rule of law is that the government shall be restricted by law,” said Zhang Qianfan, a law professor at Peking University. “But now it is using the law to punish whoever criticizes it or has some influence in the public realm.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="209" data-total-count="1881">In March, <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/world/asia/5-womens-rights-activists-are-formally-detained-in-beijing.html">five young feminists</a> using social media to organize a campaign against sexual abuse were detained and initially investigated on the picking quarrels charge, setting off <a title="China Law & Policy article." href="http://chinalawandpolicy.com/2015/03/15/without-committing-a-crime-five-female-activists-detained-in-china/"> global outrage</a> against <a title="More news and information about China." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">China</a>.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="264" data-total-count="2145">The <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/world/asia/china-arrests-human-rights-lawyers-zhou-shifeng.html?_r=0">latest wave</a> of detentions of so-called provocateurs took place this month, when police officers across <a class="meta-loc" title="More news and information about China." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/china/index.html?inline=nyt-geo">China</a> rounded up more than 200 civil rights lawyers and their colleagues. Some remain in detention and may be charged with picking quarrels and other crimes.</p>
<p id="story-continues-3" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="350" data-total-count="2495"><a title="Sinosphere post." href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/peoples-daily-details-allegations-against-detained-lawyers/">An article in People’s Daily</a>, the flagship Communist Party newspaper, accused them of organizing protests and using instant messages to “engage in agitation and planning.” Global Times, a party-run tabloid, <a title="Global Times article (in Chinese)." href="http://opinion.huanqiu.com/editorial/2015-07/6975906.html">said</a> the lawyers “often were no longer engaged in law, but in picking quarrels and provoking trouble with a plainly political slant.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="420" data-total-count="2915">The legal definition of “picking quarrels” was expanded in late 2013 by the nation’s top legal bodies, the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, to encompass online behavior. The court said the charge could apply to anyone using information networks to “berate or intimidate others” and spread false information. First-time offenders can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="363" data-total-count="3278">The Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights advocacy group based in San Francisco, said that the interpretation was a “major elaboration” on the charge and that it treated online space “not only as a platform through which to incite others to disrupt social order but as a kind of public space itself that can be thrown into disorder by certain kinds of acts.”</p>
<p id="story-continues-4" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="274" data-total-count="3552">The expanded interpretation also made unlawful any <a title="China Copyright and Media article." href="https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/interpretation-concerning-some-questions-of-applicable-law-when-handling-uses-of-information-networks-to-commit-defamation-and-other-such-criminal-cases/">“defaming information”</a> that is reposted 500 times or viewed 5,000 times, actions generally beyond the control of a post’s author. That definition was reiterated in the draft of a <a title="Sinosphere post." href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-chinas-draft-cybersecurity-law/">cybersecurity law</a> released this month.</p>
<p id="story-continues-5" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="354" data-total-count="3906">Dui Hua <a title="Human Rights Journal article." href="http://www.duihuahrjournal.org/2015/03/article-293-deeming-free-speech.html">said in a March report</a> that since the new interpretation took effect, “a growing list of Chinese people have been detained or charged for speech-related incidents” under the law. Among other things, the charge has been used to reinforce an <a title="Op-Ed for The Times." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/opinion/yu-hua-china-confronts-the-online-rumor-mill.html?_r=0">“anti-rumor campaign”</a> aimed at silencing people who question the official versions of news events.</p>
<p id="story-continues-6" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="219" data-total-count="4125">Just days after the new interpretation was announced, Yang Hui, a 16-year-old boy, was <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/24/world/asia/crackdown-on-dissent-in-china-meets-online-backlash-after-boys-arrest.html">detained on the charge</a> for having raised questions online about the police’s investigation of the death of a karaoke club manager.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="167" data-total-count="4292">Because the government does not publicly report comprehensive judicial data, it is unclear precisely when the charge began to be widely used to restrict online speech.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="270" data-total-count="4562">“There do seem to be more cases of this coming to light, but I don’t think anyone can say with any certainty about statistics,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies the legal system. “There’s no transparency.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="212" data-total-count="4774">He said security officials may prefer this charge because it may be easier to make a case for “picking quarrels” than for subversion of the state, another charge commonly used to punish political malcontents.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="150" data-total-count="4924">The wider interpretation, he said, was aimed at addressing the growing political discourse in cyberspace, which can at times feed into street actions.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="161" data-total-count="5085">“The boundaries between online space and physical space were beginning to get blurred,” he said. “The authorities needed to respond to this in new ways.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="364" data-total-count="5449">The best-known “picking quarrels” case is that of Pu Zhiqiang, 50, a burly, baritone-voiced civil rights defense lawyer who has been held by the police for more than one year <a title="Statement from the American State Department." href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/05/241956.htm">without a trial</a>. In May, prosecutors <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/world/asia/china-pu-zhiqiang-trial.html">brought two charges against him</a>: inciting ethnic hatred, and picking quarrels and provoking trouble, for which he faces up to eight years in prison.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="119" data-total-count="5568">Mr. Pu’s lawyers said the prosecutors had built their case on 28 posts he had written on Weibo, a microblog platform.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="467" data-total-count="6035">One lawyer, Shang Baojun, said that the prosecutors had not laid out their evidence in detail, but that the ethnic hatred charge seemed to apply to posts that Mr. Pu wrote after a knife <a title="Times article." href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/world/asia/china-executes-3-over-deadly-knife-attack-at-train-station-in-2014.html"> attack at the Kunming train station</a> in 2014 in which ethnic <a title="More articles about Uighurs." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/uighurs_chinese_ethnic_group/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Uighurs</a> killed 31 people. Mr. Pu said Chinese policies in the western region of Xinjiang, where most <a class="meta-classifier" title="More articles about Uighurs." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/uighurs_chinese_ethnic_group/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Uighurs</a> live, were partly to blame. “If you say Xinjiang belongs to China, don’t treat it as a colony,” he wrote.</p>
<p id="story-continues-7" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="144" data-total-count="6179">As for the picking quarrels charge, Mr. Shang said it was hard to tell which posts would be used as evidence since the charge “is so broad.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="298" data-total-count="6477">“It may include his posts questioning some public figures and the meeting concerning June 4,” Mr. Shang said, referring to a private gathering in Beijing that Mr. Pu attended in May 2014 to commemorate the June 4, 1989, crackdown around Tiananmen Square. Mr. Pu was detained after that meeting.</p>
<p id="story-continues-8" class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="346" data-total-count="6823">Though Mr. Pu is suffering from prostatitis, no one is allowed to give him medicine, Mr. Shang said. He walks about two hours a day inside his cell to try to alleviate the pain. Officials have rejected applications for medical bail. He has undergone 10-hour interrogation sessions and has been denied timely access to his lawyers, Mr. Shang said.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="231" data-total-count="7054">Not everyone detained on the picking quarrels charge is such an outspoken critic of the system. Dai Jianyong, a conceptual artist in Shanghai, is known for taking photographs of himself with his eyes tightly shut in a wincing face.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="248" data-total-count="7302">His fans call him <a title="Radio Free Asia article." href="http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/artist-05282015103250.html">Chrysanthemum Face</a>, which also means Anus Face in Chinese. His <a href="http://www.douban.com/photos/album/48448489/?start=0">online photo albums</a> show him making that face while standing next to the <a title="More articles about the Statue of Liberty." href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/statue_of_liberty/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">Statue of Liberty</a>, Facebook headquarters in Silicon Valley and <a href="http://www.douban.com/photos/album/101406334/"> models at a Shanghai car show</a>.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="288" data-total-count="7590">But the photo that crossed the line was one that <a href="https://instagram.com/p/3EXoK7rMZL/?taken-by=coca96">digitally merged his face with that of President Xi</a>. Mr. Dai was detained in late May after he posted the new photograph online. He had also posted a sticker print of the photo outside the <a title="Gallery website (in Chinese)." href="http://www.sss570.com/chinese/codes/main.asp">Shanghai Sculpture Space, a gallery</a> near his home.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="153" data-total-count="7743">“My husband loves photography,” his wife, Zhu Fengjuan, said in an interview shortly after his detention. “Apart from that, he has done nothing.”</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="132" data-total-count="7875">Mr. Dai was released from jail last month but remains under surveillance. He and Ms. Zhu have declined to be interviewed since then.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="412" data-total-count="8287">The <a title="Dui Hua article." href="http://duihua.org/wp/?p=9662%23cases">case of Nie Zhanye</a> was more overtly linked to political speech. The police here arrested him in June 2014 on suspicion of inciting subversion. Prosecutors said he had disseminated articles honoring the Tiananmen Square victims to nearly 11,000 people in dozens of chat groups. In January, Mr. Nie, 50, who works in oil exploration, was convicted on the charge of picking quarrels solely for his online posts.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="112" data-total-count="8399">A court here sentenced him to three years in prison, but he has been allowed to live at home under surveillance.</p>
<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="232" data-total-count="8631">A poem by another author that Mr. Nie posted on the Internet last year said: “They used to crush students with armored vehicles. Nowadays, they are ready to launch a full-scale war against their people by maintaining stability.”</p>
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by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on July 27, 2015 </div>
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