Rajaraja Chola
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By Keith B. Richburg, Published: June 26
BEIJING The nine people selected later this year as Chinas top leaders will largely determine whether, and how much, the countrys authoritarian political system yields to demands for change.
And pushing them from the bottom will be a growing grass-roots army of bloggers, microbloggers and online activists who are demanding more accountability and gradually pressing the boundaries of freedom in this tightly controlled Communist-ruled country.
These blogger-activists are far from revolutionary. Like the incoming leaders, many are children of Communist Party officials. They are patriots, but they want the nations institutions to work better and on behalf of the people. They take on corrupt corporations as much as they do the government. They are just as concerned about kidnapped children and AIDS victims as they are about voting rights and free elections.
The best known among them, including scholar Yu Jianrong, whose microblog tries to connect begging street children with their parents, have more than a million followers. And they must contend with ever-changing censorship rules. Many popu*lar microbloggers have had their accounts suspended or terminated in a government crackdown this year on Internet rumors, after aggressive reporting on the case of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai.
The bloggers risk death threats and harassment to raise civic awareness, bring powerful people to book and give a voice to the voiceless.
If I speak in a high-profile way, its because I love this country, said Wang Xiaoshan, 45, a well-known journalist and active microblogger who has led a boycott campaign against a large dairy company called Mengniu, which is at the center of several recent food-safety scandals.
Wang said that he worries about his safety and that he recently spent a week in Hong Kong and three days in Macau because he was informed of a credible threat to silence him. His biggest fear, he said, is being arrested and sent to Inner Mongolia, where Mengniu is located. I know how this country works, he said. Im not afraid of jail. Im afraid of torture.
But he returned to China and to his writing. Ive always wanted to be a hero, ever since I was a child, Wang said. I think Im a hero now.
Food-safety concerns
Last year, Wu Heng, a graduate student in historical geography at Fudan University in Shanghai, became incensed when he learned that some of the lunches he bought just off campus meals that he thought contained beef actually consisted of pork that had been treated with a harmful additive to give it the color of beef.
I was shocked when I realized the food-safety issue was so close to my life, Wu, 27, said, speaking via his laptop in a university coffee shop. I decided I should do something.
Wu started a Web site last year, æ·åºçªå¤ï¼é¢å¯¹é£åå®å ¨å±æºï¼ä½ åºæçæ度, which goes by the Chinese initials for its English name, Throw It Out the Window. The phrase comes from that apocryphal moment when President Theodore Roosevelt supposedly became so disgusted after reading about conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants that he threw his breakfast sausage out a White House window.
His site compiles food-safety reports from across China and displays them on an easy-to-navigate map. Between May 3 and June 13, he said, the site recorded 1.6 million visitors, 85 percent of them new so many that his server was temporarily paralyzed.
The mild-mannered Wu is no revolutionary. His father is a Communist Party official in their native Hubei province. He has an older brother who became a computer programmer and, like his father, joined the party. As the second child, Wu said, he enjoyed a lot more freedom. Although my values are different from [those of] my parents, we can coexist peacefully, he said.
Tracking expensive habits
Another active microblogger, a financially successful investor who uses the name Huaguoshan Zongshuji, or Secretary General of the Flower and Fruit Mountain, spoke on the condition of anonymity to prevent the powerful people he has angered from tracking him down.
Secretary General became popular last year, after he began examining officially published photos of high-ranking Communist Party officials and zeroing in on their expensive wristwatches. He then matched the watches to publicly available catalogues, to reveal how much officials were spending on luxury goods while supposedly living on a government salary.
The watch blog angered so many Communist officials that it was deleted, and Secretary Generals accounts were suspended. He began a new microblog, taking on an allegedly fraudulent nonprofit group claiming to represent global luxury-goods makers. Those exposés led to threats, and Secretary General began hiding out throughout China, eventually heading to Vietnam shortly after an interview in Beijing.
Actually, Im really scared, the blogger, 33, said at a coffee shop . But will he give up microblogging? You have two options speak out or be silent, he replied. Freedom is quite important.
Like Wu, Secretary General is also the son of a Communist Party member, a military doctor. But he said his father has become disillusioned and now gets more of his news from the Internet than state-run television. The blogger joined the party while in university but let his membership lapse.
China’s bloggers are taking risks and pushing for change, one click at a time - The Washington Post
BEIJING The nine people selected later this year as Chinas top leaders will largely determine whether, and how much, the countrys authoritarian political system yields to demands for change.
And pushing them from the bottom will be a growing grass-roots army of bloggers, microbloggers and online activists who are demanding more accountability and gradually pressing the boundaries of freedom in this tightly controlled Communist-ruled country.
These blogger-activists are far from revolutionary. Like the incoming leaders, many are children of Communist Party officials. They are patriots, but they want the nations institutions to work better and on behalf of the people. They take on corrupt corporations as much as they do the government. They are just as concerned about kidnapped children and AIDS victims as they are about voting rights and free elections.
The best known among them, including scholar Yu Jianrong, whose microblog tries to connect begging street children with their parents, have more than a million followers. And they must contend with ever-changing censorship rules. Many popu*lar microbloggers have had their accounts suspended or terminated in a government crackdown this year on Internet rumors, after aggressive reporting on the case of ousted Politburo member Bo Xilai.
The bloggers risk death threats and harassment to raise civic awareness, bring powerful people to book and give a voice to the voiceless.
If I speak in a high-profile way, its because I love this country, said Wang Xiaoshan, 45, a well-known journalist and active microblogger who has led a boycott campaign against a large dairy company called Mengniu, which is at the center of several recent food-safety scandals.
Wang said that he worries about his safety and that he recently spent a week in Hong Kong and three days in Macau because he was informed of a credible threat to silence him. His biggest fear, he said, is being arrested and sent to Inner Mongolia, where Mengniu is located. I know how this country works, he said. Im not afraid of jail. Im afraid of torture.
But he returned to China and to his writing. Ive always wanted to be a hero, ever since I was a child, Wang said. I think Im a hero now.
Food-safety concerns
Last year, Wu Heng, a graduate student in historical geography at Fudan University in Shanghai, became incensed when he learned that some of the lunches he bought just off campus meals that he thought contained beef actually consisted of pork that had been treated with a harmful additive to give it the color of beef.
I was shocked when I realized the food-safety issue was so close to my life, Wu, 27, said, speaking via his laptop in a university coffee shop. I decided I should do something.
Wu started a Web site last year, æ·åºçªå¤ï¼é¢å¯¹é£åå®å ¨å±æºï¼ä½ åºæçæ度, which goes by the Chinese initials for its English name, Throw It Out the Window. The phrase comes from that apocryphal moment when President Theodore Roosevelt supposedly became so disgusted after reading about conditions in Chicago meatpacking plants that he threw his breakfast sausage out a White House window.
His site compiles food-safety reports from across China and displays them on an easy-to-navigate map. Between May 3 and June 13, he said, the site recorded 1.6 million visitors, 85 percent of them new so many that his server was temporarily paralyzed.
The mild-mannered Wu is no revolutionary. His father is a Communist Party official in their native Hubei province. He has an older brother who became a computer programmer and, like his father, joined the party. As the second child, Wu said, he enjoyed a lot more freedom. Although my values are different from [those of] my parents, we can coexist peacefully, he said.
Tracking expensive habits
Another active microblogger, a financially successful investor who uses the name Huaguoshan Zongshuji, or Secretary General of the Flower and Fruit Mountain, spoke on the condition of anonymity to prevent the powerful people he has angered from tracking him down.
Secretary General became popular last year, after he began examining officially published photos of high-ranking Communist Party officials and zeroing in on their expensive wristwatches. He then matched the watches to publicly available catalogues, to reveal how much officials were spending on luxury goods while supposedly living on a government salary.
The watch blog angered so many Communist officials that it was deleted, and Secretary Generals accounts were suspended. He began a new microblog, taking on an allegedly fraudulent nonprofit group claiming to represent global luxury-goods makers. Those exposés led to threats, and Secretary General began hiding out throughout China, eventually heading to Vietnam shortly after an interview in Beijing.
Actually, Im really scared, the blogger, 33, said at a coffee shop . But will he give up microblogging? You have two options speak out or be silent, he replied. Freedom is quite important.
Like Wu, Secretary General is also the son of a Communist Party member, a military doctor. But he said his father has become disillusioned and now gets more of his news from the Internet than state-run television. The blogger joined the party while in university but let his membership lapse.
China’s bloggers are taking risks and pushing for change, one click at a time - The Washington Post
