Frisbee Picture Censored

The Seagull has seen many text and music banned for good reasons. For example, the national anthem was banned at the Tian'anmen Square following the massacre in 1989. The Communist Party's own L'Internationale was also banned, because after all it was a fighting song. Numbers such as 64 or square of 8 can be seen as suggestive, understandably so.

However, the official Xinhua News Agency banned a picture which they themselves rated as a best picture of the year, a picture showing a dog catching a (explicit!) Frisbee disc: http://news.china.com/zh_cn/hd/11127798/20121228/17606576_12.html (click). To be specific, the picture was snapped on June 16, in Budapest in Hungarian. The thumbnail still exist, but the original picture had gone. All other pictures in this series, including those immediately next to it still are viable. In place of the large size photo, a 'China.com' logo was displayed indicating a broken link.

It can be more bizarre than banning a dog catching a Frisbee....

..but it happened after the chief editor of official Global Times Mr. Hu Xijin was mocked as a good dog who could always make up a rational for the Party no matter how unreasonable the Party might appear. They say, no matter how far or low the Party throw a Frisbee, Mr. Hu can always catch it. PS: in Chinese culture, a dog is not a positive reference for a person.

Power to the Online Chinese citizens, who made the dog catching Frisbee a taboo.

Xinhua News Agency

It was not newsworthy to report the Xinhua News Agency caught lying twice in a week. However, from time to time, people were simply interested on the motive of making a lie.

Story No. 1

Mr. Zang Jiebin is the deputy mayor of Xiamen, a Deputy-Ministry Level metropolitan in the Fujian Province. In a video viral on the Internet, Mr. Zang was seen speaking at a conference, while he stated, after touring Germany he observed how difficulty a common German person to access the Internet. According to Zang, German people would have to go through layers of examinations from varies government agencies before they could be granted Internet access. On the contrary, Zang pronounced, people in mainland China should feel lucky about their broad freedom regrading Internet access.

As you can expect, the video was mocked and ridiculed by Chinese Netizens. Some demanded the mayor to reveal his source of information; while some joked he must have teleported himself to the East Germany of 1984.

Well, you guess what, days later, the 'Global Times' under the 'Xinhua News Agency' published an article to endorse the mayor's saying that it was indeed a daunting task for any German to get on Internet. Chinese should thank the Party for granting them freedom not seen in German.

Story No. 2
Singer Ms. Song Zuying performed a song at a patriotic show in Puyang City of Henan Province on June 21. A local official Mr. Wang Jvliu stepped on the stage to present a bunch of flower, then posed for a picture with his hand touched Song's shoulder. Mr. Wang was arrested and throw in jail. Besides being a popular and successful singer, Ms. Song was also rumored the mistress of Mr. Jiang Zemin, the former boss of CCP. It is deemed intolerable to touch the body of an emperor's concubine.

The Xinhua News Agency felt it needed to do something to make the hush punishment 'logical', and soon it found a good chance to jump on.

July 7th was the 74th anniversary of Lugou Bridge Incident which marked the beginning of China's defense against Japanese aggression. A mainland tourist visiting Taiwan saw the Republic of China president Mr. Ma Ying-Jeou at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial and gave him a bear hug. The move surprised Ma's bodyguards but all party were cool and so on. Taiwan media reported the breach of security as a fun story of the day. Xinhua News repackaged the story in its own words, then added a line at the end, the woman was jailed for violating Ma's safety.

Whoever made this up at the Xinhua News Agency must have his brain examined, because he was not helping. Even in the fabricated version of the story, Ma being the president of Republic of China entitles to a security line, while Song, a popular singer, does not. Is Xinhua News trying to spread the rumor that Song was indeed Jiang Zemin's concubine?

Deconstructing The Sacking of Wang Zhiye

Wang Zhiye was the diciplainary secretary, No. 3 behind the secreatary, deputy secretary of CCP in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province. Wang was reprimended on a tin of dated tea.

The drama started in a morning of August 2007. Three padlers bought a truckload of waste from Wang's home, including a tin of dated tea which they paid 30 cents RMB ($0.05) for. Later they found a CD of over 2 million RMB ($400,000) inside the tin. Knowing the money must not be legal in the first place, the padlers neogiciated a deal to return the CD on 300 thousand RMB Yuan ($40,000) kick back. They were arrested by police and sentenced to jail.

On another thread of the develoopment of the story in September 2007, over monetary dispute, a mistress of Wang sent letters to seventeen agencies to disclose Wang's corruptive life style.

Wang survived the two incidents after a masterful covering up campaign. However, he was exposed by an 'internal reference' by the Xinhua News Agency's Henan Office. The Xinhua News Agency is not only a prapaganda machine, but also a secret agency in charged of monitoring the officials. Reporters of the News Agency write 'internal reference' that is available to only senior officials of CCP. Within 24 hours, Wang was jailed. It was revealed Wang took 4 million RMB Yuan in bribary in varies occations.

In a rare manner, the entire saga was published high-profile, for reason unclear. Wang was repelled from the Party, but otherwise undented. It is hard to interpret this as a message that the central government is using a heavy hand on corruptions of senior officials. On the opposite, it is speculated that publishing the handling of this case is to deter people from harrassing senior officials.

Communisim Who?

Two parts of Obama's Inauguration Address were crossed out in the official Xinhua News Agency Chinese transcript:

1. Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tans, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. Then understood that our power alone cannot protest us, ......

2. ......, — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

The broadcasting of the ceremony by CCTV was abruptly cut when Obama mentioned the word 'communism'. The video clip could be viewed at Youtube.

Netizen Arrested for Exposing Luxury Government Building on the Net

A Shangdong Tengzhou netizen was arrested after he posted a message on the Xinhua (New China) Net, a website sponsored by the central government, pictures of luxury local government buildings.

Mr. Ma of Tengzhou, Shangdong province posted a message titled, 'Have a Look at the Luxury Government Buildings of Tengzhou' at Xinhua Net on June 14, 2007. Xinhua Net was an online affiliation of the Xinhua News Agency, the official news agency of communism China. Days ago, the Central Disciplinary Committee of the CCP asked people to post luxury government buildings on the Xinhua Net, so that they could start investigating misuse of public money. Besides fulfilling the holly duty of helping the Party, contributors would be rewarded with gifts as stated by the central disciplinary committee. Two days after Mr. Ma posted the photos, the filed chief of the China Legal News Jinan (capital city of Shandong Province) station, who is a personal friend of Mr. Ma, posted on June 16th, 2007 that Mr. Ma had been arrested by local police.

If Xinhua Net hadn't deleted pictures of the luxury government buildings posted by Mr. Ma, this would have been another case of the wrestling between the central government and local officials. However, it's likely the central government was behind the arrest of Mr. Ma because the prompt tracking and arrest of an anonymous post. This was reaffirmed when those pictures were deleted by the Xinhua Net. In the Chinese government architecture, the Xinhua News Agency functions partially as the investigative arm of the top leaders. No local governments have power to constraint the functioning of Xinhua.

The Propaganda Division of the CCP Tengzhou Committee told the media that Mr. Ma was arrested on charge of criminal impersonation because he claimed to be a reporter of Legal Daily.

The young generation of the Chinese online community was shock on Mr. Ma's arrest. However, elder people who had been through the previous 'movement' cycles of the CCP still have vivid memory of the pattern of how CCP rooted out 'unreliable' citizens by inviting criticisms from the public. The Great Chairman Mao often proudly refer the technique as to smoke the snakes out of their holes.

Tengzhou was the birth place of Micius (480-390 B.C.). Mencius (372-289 B.C.) praised Tengzhou (then State of Teng) a "Good State".