1:2,000,000

After a magazine under the CCP's Central Propaganda Ministry (CPM) published an editorial in which Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a renowned scientist, entrepreneur and angel investor was accused of committing ten horrendous crimes (Lee's Ten Crimes), the CPM had given a green light for mass attack.

A screen shot, via Ranxiangmm, circulated in Chinese blogsphere read: All websites and networks should aggressively forward or post the Lee's Ten Crimes article in the form of user-generated-contents (forums, comments). In the mean time, strictly moderate posts attacking the author of the article.

At RMB 769 billion ($130 billion), China's expenses on interior oppression, aka maintaining stability or Weiwen in Chinese, surpasses national defense according to national budget published in March. This ratio made China the first major power to spend more to defend against its people than to defend against outside threats. An Oct 3 article published by official media New Capital revealed that there were over 2 million Chinese working as online speech monitors and inspectors. The figure also shadows the 2 million strong active duty military personnels in the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Armed with his PhD in Computer Science from CMU, and senior executive experiences at Apple, Microsoft and Google, Lee had been fighting smartly, utilizing Big Data tools such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data mining to amass a fans (avid followers) base of over 51 million on Sina Weibo.

It will be difficult to foretell the outcome of a battle in which one free soul leads a community of 51 million to fend off aggression of an army of 2 million. It may be even more difficult to assess the long lasting impact regardless who is the winner on the battlefield.

Ten Crimes Committed by Kai-Fu Lee

Taiwan born and US educated Kai-Fu Lee made himself top in the list of targets for China's propaganda machines, after he started tweeting about free speech and civil rights issues in China. As it always happens, when they can't deny what you said, they tried to bury you with lies.

Lee survived the first wave of attack from Dr. Fang Shimin 'Fang Zhouzi' who accused him of cheating on resume. Dr. Fang, a Michigan trained biology postdoc who married an official Xinhua News senior reporter, claimed Lee wrongfully bolstered his academic title at Carnegie Mellon University from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor. The second wave of attack came from a internationally renowned biologist Rao Yi, who took the Dean of Life Sciences Institute at Beijing University. Rao boldly claimed Lee did not even receive an offer for Assistant Professor at CMU.

Extremely nuances as they might look, they are prelude of a classical smear campaign which had been mastered by Big Brothers to silence a criticizer of the regime. Otherwise it would be perplexing to read Dr. Fang and Dr. Rao's blindly evilization of Lee. Dr. Fang had repeatedly stated himself, that AP in the US should not be translated to AP in Chinese, because the two systems were very different. He even claimed that any AP in a Research I university qualifies as academician in Chinese system. In Dr. Rao's case, with his background, training and experience in the US academia, it will be totally crazy to accuse someone having cheating on academic title without a single thread of proof, especially when Lee was such a big shot in the CS, whose contribution in Natural Language Processing, a branch of Artificial Intelligence has lasting impact till today. Lee left CMU to become a senior executive in Microsoft and later Google.

Dr. Fang and Dr. Rao's participation of this smear campaign is a reflection of the infiltration of Party in the Chinese academic world.

The drama ended when Lee posted his diploma, offer letter, and the President of CMU wrote a letter to clarify Lee's position was indeed associate professor level.

Lee was recently diagnosed with Cancer, and the Party's propaganda team smelled blood. This time, they accused Lee of pretending cancer patient to advertize for pharmaceutical companies among other horrific crimes in an all-out bombardment.

The official Party Organization (Dang Jian, aka Building Up CCP) published a 9,000 word editorial, accused Kai-Fu Lee of ten crimes:

1. Sexuall harassment to minors both in the US and in China;
   Seagull Comment: Someone should tip the D.A. in the US instead of lashing out on an official Communist Party publication in China.
2. Using backdoors and trojan horses to steal Chinese users's financial information as former Google executive;
   Seagull Comment: Google watch out, you are the next
3. Giving inspirational talks to youth while being a loser in life;
   Seagull Comment: Who would claim himself a winner, if Lee were deemed a loser?
4. Fabricating history to glorify murders and advocate killing;
   Seagull Comment: What else is this guy capable of?
5. Running a business, in reference to Lee's angel investing firm, like a charity;
   Seagull Comment: Is this really a crime?
6. Cultivating hatreds among the youth towards government;
   Seagull Comment: Looks like this piece of editorial had achieved more
7. Spying for the US government;
   Seagull Comment: Hang him, after you finished creating the evidence
8. Launching ideological war against Chinese government;
   Seagull Comment: A modern day Don Quixote? Way to go!
9. Slandering official government agencies such as the Central China TV (CCTV) and Xinhua News Agency;
   Seagull Comment: Bravo!
10. Faking cancer to sell drugs.
    Seagull Comment: A gifted plot, precious!

When Lee announced his lymphoma diagnosis in September, he was already named by the official Xinhua News Agency as a public enemy number one in the height of cracking down of online speech. Chinese-American venture capitalist and Berkeley graduate Charles Xue 'Manzi' was arrested on spreading anti-government rumors online. A gray hair Xue in tears and running nose was brought to appear on the CCTV to tell people how he had cheated on payment to prostitutes and how he had married to a woman, who was ex-wife of a son of a corrupted official. China observers had thought that God was helping Lee with a death sentence to deflect the inevitable incoming train of propaganda, so that he could be left alone, and die with a good name. It's evident that even God cannot help Lee, facing off with a Party who does not believe in God, morale, ethics, value, or anything that matters.

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?