MCLC: goodbye to online debate

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: goodbye to online debate
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Source: SCMP (12/31/13):
http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1394040/prominent-scholar-he
-weifang-says-goodbye-online-debate

Prominent scholar He Weifang says 'goodbye' to online debate
By Patrick Boehler and Laura Zhou

He Weifang, one of the mainland’s best known "public intellectuals", said
farewell to his Sina Weibo account on Tuesday, reducing further the number
of prominent political thinkers debating on Chinese social media.

“In the past year, I’ve seen one familiar blogger after the other
disappear, it could not avoid feeling disappointed,” he wrote in post on
Tuesday afternoon. “It’s time to close this microblog. Goodbye,” he
concluded.

He, a law professor at Peking University, told the South China Morning
Post on the phone that he felt “uncomfortable” with insults and abusive
words leftists left in his microblog.

He has more than 1.1 million followers on his Sina Weibo microblog. His
decision to end his microblogging follows a trend of prominent
opinion-leaders, known as “public intellectuals”, going silent amid a
government crackdown against dissent.

After a series of detentions in August, the Supreme People’s Court said in
September that any online post deemed libellous that is reposted more than
500 times or viewed more than 5,000 times can land its author in jail.

Some prominent commentators, like venture capitalists Charles Xue Biqun
and Wang Gongquan, have been detained on seperate charges. Others, like
historian Zhang Lifan, have seen their weibo accounts closed.

Scholar He attached a painting of the Tao Yuanming, an ancient poet who
retired from government service in disgust of corruption, to his post. A
signatory to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo’s Charter ’08, he has
in the past frequently called for constitutional rule and political
reforms in the past.

“The doctrine of communism inevitably leads to slavery, because it takes
away people’s right to think and to express - and these problems have not
been properly resolved," he told the Post in an interview in October.

Hundreds of internet users have expressed regret over his decision to
leave social media. “If He is gone, how many wumao will lose their jobs?”,
quipped one, referring to government-paid leftist attackers of “public
intellectuals” like He.