v******s
发帖数: 272 | 1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/world/asia/18li.html?_r=1&hp
China’s Censorship Backfires in ‘Li Gang’ Case
BAODING, China — One night in late October, a college student named Chen
Xiaofeng was in-line skating with a friend on the grounds of Hebei
University in central China. They were gliding past the campus grocery
when a Volkswagen sedan raced down a narrow lane and struck them head-
on.
The impact sent Ms. Chen flying and broke the other woman’s leg. The 22-
year-old driver, who was intoxicated, tried to speed away. Security
guards intercepted him, but he was undeterred. He warned them: “My
father is Li Gang!”
“The two girls were motionless,” one passer-by that night, a student who
identified himself only by his surname, Duan, said this week. “There was
a small pool of blood.” The next day, Ms. Chen was dead.
Chen Xiaofeng was a poor farm girl. The man accused of killing her, Li
Qiming, is the son of Li Gang, the deputy police chief in the Beishi
district of Baoding. The tale of her death is precisely the sort of
gripping socio-drama — a commoner grievously wronged; a privileged
transgressor pulling strings to escape punishment — that sets off alarm
bells in the offices of Communist Party censors. And in fact, party
propaganda officials moved swiftly after the accident to ensure that the
story never gained traction.
Curiously, however, the opposite has happened. A month after the
accident, much of China knows the story, and “My father is Li Gang” has
become a bitter inside joke, a national catchphrase for shirking any
responsibility — washing the dishes, being faithful to a girlfriend —
with impunity. Even the government’s heavy-handed effort to control the
story has become the object of scorn among younger, savvier Chinese.
“There was a little on the school news channel at first,” one Hebei
University student who offered only his surname, Wang, said in an
interview last week. “But then it went completely quiet. We’re really
disappointed in the press for stopping coverage of this major news.”
In many ways, the Li Gang case, as it is known, exemplifies how China’s
propaganda machine — able to slant or kill any news in the age of
printing presses and television — is sometimes hamstrung in the age of
the Internet, especially when it tries to manipulate a pithy narrative
about abuse of power.
“Frequently we’ll see directives on coverage, but those directives don’t
necessarily mean there is no coverage,” David Bandurski, an analyst at
the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project, said in an interview.
“They’re not all that effective.”
“Censorship is increasingly unpopular in China,” he added. “We know how
unpopular it is, because they have to keep the guidelines themselves
under wraps.”
A gadfly blog, sarcastically titled Ministry of Truth, has begun to
puncture the veil surrounding censorship, anonymously posting secret
government directives leaked by free-speech sympathizers. According to
the blog’s sources, the Central Propaganda Bureau issued a directive on
Oct. 28, 10 days after the accident, “ensuring there is no more hype
regarding the disturbance over traffic at Hebei University.”
On that same day, censors prohibited reporting on six other incidents.
One involved another girl’s death in police custody. Others included an
investigation of a Hunan Province security official, the sexual
dalliance of a Maoming vice mayor, the abandonment of closed pavilions
at Shanghai’s World Expo and the increasing censorship of Internet chat
rooms.
But the Li Gang case was hard to suppress, partly because it personified
an enduring grievance: the belief that the powerful can flout the rules
to which ordinary folk are forced to submit. Increasingly, that
grievance focuses on what Chinese mockingly call the “guan er dai” and
“fu er dai” — the “second generation,” children of privileged
government
officials and the super-rich.
Realizing the delicacy of the matter, the government tried to shape
public reaction in more ways than by simply restricting coverage. After
Internet bulletin boards began buzzing with outrage, China’s national
television network, CCTV, broadcast an Oct. 22 interview with Li Gang
and his son, filled with effusive apologies for the accident. On Oct.
24, the news media reported that Li Qiming, who had been detained by the
police the day after the accident, had been arrested.
Police regulations ostensibly bar interviews with detainees. A Baoding
police spokeswoman who identified herself as Ms. Zhou said in an e-mail
that the network obtained the interview because it had been approved by
the local party propaganda office.
Ms. Chen’s survivors were not afforded the same access. In early
November, Fenghuang Satellite Television, a news channel based in Hong
Kong that is available to some in mainland China, broadcast an angry
interview with Ms. Chen’s brother, Chen Lin. On Nov. 4, the Central
Propaganda Bureau banned further news of the interview.
But censorship officials were seeking to control a message that had
already spread widely.
On Oct. 20, a female blogger in northern China nicknamed Piggy Feet Beta
announced a contest to incorporate the phrase “Li Gang is my father”
into classical Chinese poetry. Six thousand applicants replied, one
modifying a famous poem by Mao to read “it’s all in the past, talk about
heroes, my father is Li Gang.”
Copycat competitions, using ad slogans and popular song lyrics, quickly
sprang up elsewhere on the Internet. In the southern metropolis of
Chongqing, an artist created an installation based on the phrase.
On Nov. 9, Internet chatter on the case abruptly withered. But some have
continued to dodge Web censors: starting in early November, the Beijing
artist and activist Ai Weiwei posted on his Web site an interview with
Ms. Chen’s father and brother, who said he had rejected appeals to
negotiate a settlement of the case.
“In society they say everyone is equal, but in every corner there is
inequality,” Chen Lin said.
“How can you live in this country and this society without any worry?”
he added.
Censors repeatedly blocked the interview. Mr. Ai has played a cat-and-
mouse game, moving it to a new Web site every time.
Finally, last Thursday, the Chens’ lawyer, Mr. Zhang, received a
telephone call from his clients. “They thanked me for all the efforts I
put into this case,” he said, “but they told me they have resolved their
dispute with Li Gang’s family. Half an hour after the call, they came to
my office and handed in a termination contract. And after that, they
just disappeared.”
Mr. Zhang said many of his cases involving conflicts between ordinary
citizens and powerful people had ended the same way. “In current Chinese
society, people put an emphasis on power more than on individual
liberty,” he said.
If the settlement was intended to quash chatter about the Li Gang case,
it, too, seems to have accomplished the opposite.
In Baoding, Hebei University students questioned at random for an hour
early this week uniformly denounced the handling of the case of Chen
Xiaofeng. “I’d see the case to the end,” said one young man who gave
only his surname, Zhang. “Go through the legal process and seek
justice.”
A second student, called Zhao, was unsparing. “This is the kind of
society we live in,” he said angrily. “People who have power, they can
cover up the sky. We want this settled according to the law.” | v******s
发帖数: 272 | 2 有意思，看了看读者评论，看来是BACK FIRE到美国了。
很多说美国一样，有钱人能赢官司。 | p**********d
发帖数: 7918 | 3 美國媒體倒沒有腦殘到請一方不請另外一方的。
也沒看到美宣部禁止報導領導幹部子女車禍。
【在 v******s 的大作中提到】
: 有意思，看了看读者评论，看来是BACK FIRE到美国了。
: 很多说美国一样，有钱人能赢官司。
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