Top 10 Chinese Internet Events in 2012

Top Ten (Chinese) Internet Moments 2012
1. Chinese intellectuals were forced to take side in a duel between Dr. Shimin Fang and Mr. Han Han. Han was ambushed after he wrote three political essays in which Han advocated for citizen actions for progressive reforms.
2. Director of the Central Bureau of Compilation and Translation, the ideological think tank, was accused of adultery, corruption and taking bribes by a postdoc trainee in the Bureau in a detailed account literature, which was posted online.
3. A post by a Hunan police went viral when people found the government paid $30k to some Urghur Muslims for some fruit cakes. The incident renewed public skeptical in China's Affirmative Action which was perceived as leaning against majority.
4. A Green Peace post triggered an outcry on an unauthorized human test of Genetic Modified Golden Rice on school age children. The experiment was explicitly banned by Chinese authority, but the US based researchers from the Tufts University smuggled testing materials into China, and conduct the experiment in a rural elementary school in disguise of a state sponsored lunch project without informing parents.
5. Violent mobs destroyed Japanese cars and attacked drivers in the heated anti-Japan campaigns across China following the dispute over Diaoyu Islands. Online photos and accounts showed many of the most violent mob were actually plain cloth police.
6. Two Chinese graduate students at USC were killed outside their residence. Because the Associate Press mistakenly reported the two were rich kids, and then refused to issue a correction upon request, Chinese communities felt the AP was conducting an Anti-Chinese spinning of the tragedy.
7. Beijing municipal government was criticized for its handling of a heavy rain. Dozens of people died, including one driver drown in his car on the street in the heart of its CBD area. Many likened the incident to the chaos and cover-up in the bullet train accident last year.
8. Following former deputy mayor of Chongqing Wang Lijun's failed asylum bid at the US Consulate in Chengdu, a big political drama unfolded in the course of months, often proceeded by online rumors which were later turned out to be the truth.
9. Chinese learned from Internet that an affordable luxury brand Zadig & Voltaire announced they would not serve Chinese as a sales pitch.
10. Vice-Chairman of the National People's Congress's Financial and Economic Committee Mr. He Keng blamed westerners who donate to Chinese were shameless. The comment backfired, and forced He quit from online social networks.