The Scariest Scene

Journalist turned writer Li Chengpeng held a book signing event on Sunday in Beijing to promote his new essay collection 'Everyone in the World Knows'. This was the second leg of his campaign for the new book. Last week in Chengdu, he was told not to say a word during the entire process. He was even denied to say 'Good morning' at the beginning of the event. He also was not allowed to say 'thank you' to his readers. That was a scary scene.

In his book, he pointed out absurdities in some seemingly normal every life. It encourages readers to reflect on simple facts, and tell right from wrong. It is not political, not even toughing any ongoing events. However, it tries to bring out people's own judgement and feeling, independent from politics.

Readers lined up for 3 hours to get book signed. It is a very cold winter day, single digit in Fahrenheit. It is also a 'crazy bad' smog day, with PM10 number shooting 1,000.

Half way through, one Maoist punched Li when he was signing for a reader, then disappeared. There were dozens of uniformed police and security at the scene to monitor Li and intimidate readers. Police did not do anything to stop the attack or the attacker. It was a scary scene.

Towards the end, another Maoist threw a chef's knife at Li. The knife barely missed Li. This time, the attacker was subdued by readers, and handed over to police. The attacker was let go by the police, no charge was filed. It was a scary scene.

However, the most scariest scene of all, was that over 1,000 readers showed up in that police trap, in a prohibitive cold and polluted day to support Li, with over 7,000 book signed. Frankly, it's not that a great writing, or even not some great subjects to be read. There was nothing really intriguing, provoking, or even any where sensational. Li himself is a soft-spoken thinker advocating for evolution rather than revolution. Li campaigned for a lower level delegate two years ago. However, when the Party passed a message of disapproval, he immediately abolished his campaign. Over 1,000 readers showed up in defiance, despite police harassment and harsh weather, only because Li was perceived to be a person with value. Over one thousand ordinary people waited more than three hours outdoor to support a fairly moderate writer, just because it was 'a different voice'. It's a vivid testimony on how hard people's resentment has been looking for a vent.

That, is the most scariest scene.

Remember Aaron Swartz

From the "Official Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz"

Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing.

Aaron’s insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept injustice as inevitable—these gifts made the world, and our lives, far brighter. We’re grateful for our time with him, to those who loved him and stood with him, and to all of those who continue his work for a better world.

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Today, we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost.

The Seagull, along with almost every other programmers in this world, is saddened by the pointless loss of a truly gifted talent, one who loves this world with his tireless efforts to contribute the knowledge base and to care for the general people. However, what bothers the Seagull most are:

• The sole reason of his death seems to be a result of a pointless prosecution jointly conducted by the US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the MIT.

• After scrutinizing the case documents, there is no 'hacking' involved, whatsoever. The public wouldn't have the technical expertise to tell the difference between an access and a hack. And the whole crime case with 14 charges was built upon the assumption of public/jury of your peers's inability to tell.

• It's unclear which way the trail would go, had the case seen its day in the court. However, the power of prosecutorial intimidation is mighty enough to crush a talent of our time.

• The US justice system did this one year after the British government apologized for the death of Alan Turing, 38 years too late.

• The attitude of 'I am right (by my book), so I'm right to nuke you' that dominates our time.

The Seagull, a small time programmer, demands an answer and accountability from the prosecutor, the judge and the justice system as well as the MIT.

Behind the Curtain of the Tearoom

A Twitter user revealed his experience after returned from a Tea-Date. Police often summon political dissidents to a tea-drinking appointment in their first offence, before harsher enforcing measure would be involved.

Recently, after hinting support to Southern Weekend's fighting for freedom in journalism, entrepreneur Kai-Fu Lee, real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang and famous actress Annie Yi all were summoned to have tea with police. Among all tea-drinkers, Lee is the only person to have ever even brought up the experience afterwards. In fact, Lee posted a picture of the tea set in defiance (taking picture is not allowed). It is a very nice tea set. Lee, a renowned scientist in artificial intelligence, and former senior Global VP at Mircosoft, and first CEO of Google China, is not a nobody that police can easily mess up with everyday. Others were not as lucky. Protesters including many students reported being stripped and locked up. Veteran rights activists wrote about being beaten and scolded. However, Lee was not specific on his encounter with the police, but rather announced that effectively immediately he would only talk about weekdays (not Weekend), and that he would only mention East, West and North (not South).

We may, though, figure out what actually happened behind the door of the tearoom, thanks to Twitter which is beyond the reach of Chinese Internet Cops.

Twitter user xddcc shared his tea-drinking experience, which he later categorized as a hell-chat. XDDCC is a cartoonist and illustrator. He was summoned because his postings on Tibetan issues. In addition to routine questionings and educating, he was asked to draw a cartoon. It can be anything he likes to draw. The political police "just want to see how good he is", quote and unquote. So he drew a cartoon for them. Then he was allowed to leave.

In many cases, people were summoned to meet the political police for no obvious reasons. There is no intel to be extracted. The purpose is simple: we ask you come, you must come, regardless how polite we were when we asked you; we ask you to dance, you dance, even if we are not interested in dancing. We can make you do that because we know you will comply.

Perhaps, Lee wrote them a beautiful piece of code to examine the boundaries of an array. Perhaps, Yi sang one of her most popular songs. It's not a burden to them at all. It's actually what they do best. However, the point is: you do it when we tell you to do it; and you stop when we say stop.

Everyone looks to do what they do best. However, there is nothing more humiliating than having to do what you do best in a specified place at a specified time to a specified people. Did you have the courage to refuse? Will you have the courage to tell?

Having spoken for the Southern Weekend, and after learned of Annie Yi being summoned for the tea appointment by political police, actress Li Bingbing posted a photo of a tea set on her Weibo indicating she would not be intimated by an invitation to the tearoom.

Li was not foreign to police appointments. In her 2009 movie Feng Sheng, Li played a role of a government employee who was under suspicion of leaking key information. In the movie, Li was invited to a tearoom appointment with a detective Takeda (played by Xiaoming Huang). During the interview, no question was asked. The detective was simply curious on how precisely beautiful Li's body was. He asked Li to strip down, then used a range of instruments such as ruler, vernier caliper, micrometer and compasses to carefully measure every aspect of her body.

In the movie, Li's role was known for her beauty. The detective told Li that he wanted to study Li's beauty himself, therefore he needed to collect quantitative data from Li's body. The detective did not have to fully complete his work before Li mentally collapsed. Regardless how proud and confident Li was about her own body, making her to present it in the tearoom had been proved to be the most effective way to crush any dignity in her mind. The detective came to the conclusion that Li was innocent, because a career spy would be able to hold on longer.

Is Li Bingbing ready to face the challenge in real life? How far will she go to prove her innocence?

Global Reach of Chinese Censorship

Tech in Asia reported that 'sensitive phrases' such as the name of the newspaper having an issue with the Guangdong Provincial Propaganda Department Southern Weekend were being filtered on global scale by WeChat, aka. Weixin, the No. 1 popular messaging app in the world. Weixin is a cross-platform product by Chinese company Tensent (HKG: 0700).

According to Tech in Asia's tests, messages containing the phrase were blocked not only inside China, but also when both ends of communications were outside China.

A couple of days back in the height of the New Capital Daily incident, it was reported that Internet cops work in the operation room of Sina Weibo (Twitter like micro-blog). Major Internet service providers have permanent offices for Internet cops. However, it's rare for them to directly work at terminals in the operation rooms.

Taiwan's Ma Ying-Jeou administration suffered collateral damage when the opposition Party questioned his policy to boost ties to the regime on mainland.

Although the idea of a unified China roots deeply in culture, tradition and people's hearts, the former Chairwoman of the pro-independent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Ms. Tsai Ing-wen enjoys great popularity among Chinese online communities. Chinese people on mainland were amazed when they watched Ms. Tsai gave a graceful conceding speech after she lost to incumbent pro-mainland President Mr. Ma. This time, Chinese were pleased to hear Ms. Tsai stated unwavering support to the demand of a free press. Many said the mainland should not destroy the great political system that Taiwanese people were lucky to live in.

Hong Kong's leadership, Mr. CY Leung who is hand-picked by the central government, is also facing a set back as pro-democracy groups in the legislature launched a symbolic impeach process.

China built mega data warehouses, aimed to win global cloud service contracts. It's unclear how western companies and individuals feel if they know their documents were stored and processed inside China boundary.

This May Not Be It

In the 2003 movie The Recruit, senior agent Walter Burke's tagline was 'In the CIA, nothing is what it seems.'

It might be the case of recent conflicts between news outlets and the Propaganda Department.

It's not Spring 1989, when the country was nervously weathering an unprecedented inflation, when political corruption was attributed as the cause of all adversities. People was questioning the leadership of the country, and uncertain about future of Communism. This time it's different. Someone summarized it well: if you collect your intel exclusively from the Weibo (online), you would be convinced that the regime would fall before it saw the light of another day. However, when you get up in the morning, and take a walk in the grocery market, you will know the Party's ruling is to last another 100 years. In other words, the great majority of people do not echo the anxiety of intellectuals.

Those working in the media business have particular reasons to be nervous, partially originated from the strict control of Internet. While western press such as Washington Post and New York Times's financial prospect is hanging on a thread, Chinese newspapers have seen the fastest expansion in the last decade. While almost all major websites (Google, Wikipedia, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, just naming a few) are blocked in China, Radio and TV are under much tighter control because of their dangerous capacity to reach audiences in real time, newspaper had been considered a favorable way of controlled information dissemination by the authority. At the same time, they are the only news source for ordinary Chinese. As a result, one large city often finds itself home to multiple daily newspapers, each with hundreds of pages in multiple sections, and each enjoys millions of circulations. Accordingly, each newspaper employs hundreds of staff reporters and editors, in addition to an army of supporting personnel.

In most recent years, as more people start to retrieve information from the Internet, many become disappointed by the weakness of traditional media. Struggling to compete with the Internet as well as other papers, newspapers are increasingly frustrated by the content censorship. Many journalists see the censorship a fatal threat to a newspaper's survival, and their personal financial stability.

Mr. Anti, a veteran new media researchers cautioned the world to notice the difference between news autonomy and news freedom. Despite what had been heard and said, the Southern Weekend was not fighting for Free Press. Rather, it was bargaining how much leeway it could use in a war of its own fate.

Dr. Fang 'Zhouzi' Shimin mocked the dispute between the newspaper and the Propaganda Department a daily disagreement between a prostitute and her pimp. Dr. Fang's wife Ms. Wang Juhua is a senior reporter with the official Xinhua News Agency. He must know better.

It's not the first time the duo concerted their moves. Not too long ago, Mr. Anti joined Dr. Fang in his attack at Han Han, and blamed Southern Weekend in making Han Han an idol for Chinese youth.

Talking About Forces

After the Southern Weekend incident, Han Han published a blog in support. The blog entitled "There Is One Kind of Force".

Hu Xijin, chief editor of he Global Times, acting as the mouthpiece of the Propaganda Department, released an editorial, in which Mr. Hu accused overseas enemy forces as black hands behind the Southern Weekend's resistance to censorship.

Having heard of the incident of New Capital Daily, Li Jingrui, a former reporter with the paper, re-published an article in support. The article entitled: 'Force in Silence'.

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.