Child Eat, Mom Watch

Premier Wen Jiabao went online to chat with Netizens for the third time in three years. Regarding the rising grocery price, Wen told a story on a tour in Zhejiang Province last year. At a luncheonette attached to a supermarket, Wen saw a mom and a child who bought only one meal. The child was eating, and the mom was watching the child eating on the saide. Wen asked the woman how many children did she have. The woman started crying. She said this was the only child she had. She said her husband just passed away because of cancer. She only hoped she could keep the child with her in the city she was working as a migrate worker. Local officials accompanying Wen granted the child permission to attend school.

China still has hope, as long as someone higher up who is still of seeing and feeling the suffering of people.

Should China Suspend Spending on Great Firewall (GFW)?

With help from US companies (Cisco, for example), the security ministry of China developed the most sophisticated and technical successful Great Firewall (GFW) project to block Chinese Netizens from obtaining and spreading information from the Net. Sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Picasa, Blogger are blocked, along with others.

In the past 10 years, a conservative estimate of the cost of the project is around $20B RMB ($6.5B). If considering the majority of Chinese people online didn't care about the outside world, then the cost on individual Netizen is an astonishing $30,769 RMB ($5,000) per capital.

If you are one of the Chinese who flipped the 'wall' to read this article, you should feel satisfied after knowing that the government had spent $5,000 on you.

The study was done by Li Huafang.

Lucky ball

Chinese people under the CCP's heavy handed dictation had been known for their stubbornness in playing lucky balls. It was no exception on the First 'Netizen Culture Festival' when a banner read 'Cross the Great Wall to the World'.

In the digital age, to educated westerns, the Great Firewall has replaced the Great Wall as the symbol of China, under the Party's suppression on information.

SinoPec Outsmarted By Chinese Netizens

SinoPec was forced to admit they bought a $2.5 million chandelier in a new office building.

In the past week, Chinese BBS and online forums were infected with posts alleging SinoPec, a state owned petroleum company, spent $30 million on a chandelier when they upgrade their office building. Yesterday, the company made a clarification statement that the chandelier only cost $2.5 million.

SinoPec is resented by almost every private driver because of their pricing on gasoline, and their claim that gasoline should be sold at the same price in China and in the US.

It's Your Turn, Sir?

The John Doe, who had stripped himself of any coverings, was seen reminding the communism official it's his turn to strip off. Standing behind him, are the cheering crowd of Chinese Netizens. The "news cartoon" was created by Mr. Kuang Biao. The cartoon quickly became a phenomenon itself. On one of the thousands websites that it had been trans-posted, it received over 1.6 replies within 9 days.

During the National Congress meeting two weeks ago, a minister level official was quoted as saying if people demanded officials to disclose their income, ordinary people would have to do it first. Now, many ordinary people are responding to the dare by going public with their belongings, all of them from savings, valuables, to number of dates. They are urging the government official to do the same.

An earlier post on the Sunshine Act.

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".