Fool's Mountain: Blogging for China

In the aftermath of the Weng’An (Wengan) riots, most newspapers are running with Xinhua’s short three paragraph report on the issue. I believe in keeping with recent trends, we will hear a much more detailed analysis and explanation from Xinhua shortly. In the mean time, there have been several online editorials from various newspapers, in some cases perhaps bending official rules on independent reporting by highlighting netizen comments rather than their own story. Many of these editorials are focusing their attacks on the local government, while insisting that the central government desires something else. I hope their interpretation proves to be the case. I translate two editorials below.

First, an article from the online site of the Jiangsu Communist Party newspaper Xinhua Daily, which is not directly related to the national Xinhua: (“How hard is it to give the masses the real picture?”, 原文)

… Article begins with a repeat of the first paragraph of the Xinhua story on the incident …

The incident’s cause is simple; it’s all because of dissatisfaction with the county public security office’s determination on “cause of death” for a female student. Emotionally, it’s very difficult for people not to place their sympathies with the weaker party. The majority of people are logical and rational, and that’s a point that no one, not even the national leadership or officials of every level would try to argue. So, unless it’s reached the point of extreme desperation, no one would risk everything to surround and attack the government. And from a logical point of view, it’s not difficult to determine that the people might have had good reason to rush into action.

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The Chinese internet is up in arms over the story of riots in Guizhou province over the weekend.  For the most comprehensive news we know so far, I refer you to ESWN’s very detailed coverage.  There’s nothing I have to add.

Roland at ESWN mentions that an article at Xinhua forum (连接) has been left open to netizen discussion, in contrast to much tighter standards at Tianya and MaoYan.   It’s also interesting to note that the Strong Country forum (连接) run by the People’s Daily has also been running very loose standards, if any.  See attached snapshot showing the most frequent discussions on Strong Country, many of which refer to Weng’An by name.  (If you click into a post, a side-bar showing the most current posts are almost entirely all about Weng’An.)

Popular threads on Strong Country right now include:

• Guizhou Province Weng’An Prefecture Has Hitting/Smashing/Burning Incident (连接)
• I support the people of Guizhou – Weng’An (连接)

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