Two little pinks have recently called for justice online after family members were maimed or killed in forced demolitions. On November 30, Weibo user Beitatatata (@北塔塔塔塔) posted shocking photos of her grandmother’s body laid out on a metal table, her head crushed. “In broad daylight, the Xuzhou village tyrant Zhang Shihong and his wife Wang Yan crushed my grandmother with their excavator! These murderers dig up state-owned minerals to sell at a profit and claim to be millionaires!” Beitatata’s earlier posts gush with nationalist pride and love for President Xi Jinping, and so notes of sympathy in the thousands of comments on Beitatata’s post commingled with cries of hypocrisy. “How tragic that a little pink’s family home was torn down and that people died. This splendid age is as you wished,” writes Kaweigreat (@卡位great) on Baidu Tieba.

On January 10, a Weibo user who identifies herself as Chen Jie (Kaixindebenxiaohai666666 @开心的笨小孩666666) posted images of a bulldozed garden, trees uprooted by machine, and an old man bleeding out on the side of the road. In a long post, Chen Jie writes that her parents were attacked upon their return from Beijing, where they had lead a “petition brigade” to fight a development company eager to buy their land for a pittance. “Chen Genfu and his wife, both nearly 70 years old, were on their way to the police station when two white sedans with their license plates covered blocked their way. Three masked men got out and started slashing the old couple, chopping and screaming, ‘If you petition again we’ll come back for your lives.’” Sympathy for Chen Jie’s parents has been at best tempered by her nationalistic posts prior to the attack:

Yueji7YJ (@悦己7YJ): Your country screwed you good! Now please go back and call out your friend for becoming a naturalized Australian citizen and burning his passport. [Chinese]

Is the little pink community enraged by the violence exacted on the families of their fellows? Disillusioned by the party-state they so ardently support? Apparently not. This week, their attention turned to a “triumph” for China: state-owned enterprise Taiyuan Group’s announcement that it can now manufacture the tips of ballpoint pens. From Quartz’s Josh Horwitz:

China produces an estimated 40 billion ballpoint pens annually, but many of them work poorly. Domestic manufacturers wanting to make higher-quality pens must import tip cases from Japan and Germany made of a specialized stainless steel. According to Taigang, an 83-year-old state-owned enterprise based in the Shanxi province, that’s because in better pens the cone-shaped case that holds the ball requires both special raw material and special machinery (link in Chinese). To fulfill demand, Chinese pen makers have been importing more than 1,000 tons (link in Chinese) of the needed steel annually.

[…] Taigang’s efforts didn’t come out of nowhere. A year ago in China a minor media frenzy erupted (link in Chinese) when premier Li Keqiang, a vocal proponent of bolstering technological innovation, lamented how China was producing 800 million tons of steel annually but still importing the specialized type of stainless steel needed to make the better tip cases.

[…] News of Taigang’s pen-tip “innovation” has made waves on China’s internet in the past few days. An article about the company from state media outlet People’s Daily has so far attracted over 10,000 comments and 20,000 shares on Weibo, China’s Twitter-esque social media platform. “Wow, it had never occurred to me that I had been using ballpoint pens relying on foreign technology!” wrote one user (link in Chinese) [sic]. [Source]

“The high-tech monopoly has been terminated,” rejoices Shanxiguantianpeng (@山西关天棚). “China’s scientists are so damn lovable.”

Rebel Pepper marvels at the juxtaposition of the ballpoint pen comments and the forced demolition deaths. “Please forgive my schadenfreude,” he wrote.

Cartoonist Rebel Pepper responds to the ban on protests by turning the face mask into a blindfold, explaining: “I feel that while the government has forbidden people from defending their right to breathe, they have used a blindfold to cover the people’s eyes so they will not see the pollution problem.”

Badiucao terms the protests the “Face Mask Revolution” in a nod to the color revolutions of Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, netizens are creating memes to express their outrage. In this one, a giant panda, one of Sichuan’s most beloved residents, begs, “Chengdu, let me breathe!”– a rallying cry of pollution protesters.

[… T]he project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion Chinese people. Even as Facebook faces pressure to continue growing — Mr. Zuckerberg has often asked where the company’s next billion users will come from — China has been cordoned off to the social network since 2009 because of the government’s strict rules around censorship of user content.

The suppression software has been contentious within Facebook, which is separately grappling with what should or should not be shown to its users after the American presidential election’s unexpected outcome spurred questions over fake news on the social network. Several employees who were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings about it, according to the current and former employees.

[… S]ome officials responsible for China’s tech policy have been willing to entertain the idea of Facebook’s operating in the country. It would legitimize China’s strict style of internet governance, and if done according to official standards, would enable easy tracking of political opinions deemed problematic. Even so, resistance remains at the top levels of Chinese leadership. [Source]

Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier similarly stressed that there seems to be no immediate prospect of Facebook’s entry into China:

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg visits China frequently, and yet the company is no closer to putting employees in a downtown Beijing office it leased in 2014, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company hasn’t been able to get a license to put workers there, even though they would be selling ads shown outside the country, not running a domestic social network, the person said. The ad sales work is currently done in Hong Kong. The person asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

[…] China and Facebook aren’t engaged in ongoing talks about the conditions of a return, according to a separate person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified as the matter is private. The ability to censor content would be a precondition, not the deciding factor, in any entry to the Chinese market, the person said. [Source]

The current climate in China is hardly welcoming for foreign firms, particularly following the recent passage of a draconian new cybersecurity law which mandates self-censorship, unspecified “technical support” to authorities, security reviews, and local storage of user data. Cartoonist Rebel Pepper summed this situation up last week with a skeptical take on the third “World Internet Conference” held in Wuzhen:

The banner reads “World Disinternet Conference,” with bulian (不联), meaning “disconnected,” replacing hulian (互联), or “interconnected,” in the Chinese term for “internet,” hulianwang (互联网). Read more from CDT on the three World Internet Conferences China has hosted, including a round-up on this year’s with translation from a Xinhua commentary proclaiming Xi Jinping an “internet sage.”

CDT Chinese has compiled a few reactions to the New York Times report from Sina Weibo. Some users mocked Facebook’s supplications to the “Imperial Court”:

Jianchang’anbujianchang’an (@见长安不见长安): Cutting off your balls before entering the Imperial Palace?

Luyoudahongren (@旅游大红人): Hmm, developing a castrated magical weapon to present to the emperor, this palace eunuch’s wishes are very sincere

Guliquan (@贾利权): Facebook castrates itself, seeking entry to the Imperial Palace. [Chinese]

Others questioned the need for a limited Facebook in China, and its chances of ever getting there:

Guandengwuyanzu (@关灯吴彦祖): What would this actually achieve? So, we can access the same site as people abroad, but can only partially see what they post?

Xialuotewuhuishangdeguowang (@夏洛特舞会上的国王): So this is Facebook’s corporate value system? If so, besides feeling that there’s still no way they can enter the Chinese market, I’d also like to send them a “Grass Mud Horse” [“Fuck Your Mother”]!

000000000oo (000000000哦哦): Making a Chinese version with restricted content, it’s still just a Local Area Network [not the real Internet]

Gongchandafahao (@共產大灋好): So what do we need you here for?

[The screenshot shows a “comments forbidden” notice on an article headlined “Xi Jinping: ‘We should welcome well-intentioned online comments’”]

Hulianwangdedashir (@互联网的大事儿): Better not to come at all …

Amiaoyu (@阿喵鱼): I want YouTube! I want Twitter! I don’t want to have to pay for a VPN every month ……

Zhengzaianfengdehuozhe (@正在安分的活着): We don’t need you, we need Twitter, we need YouTube, we need Google, we need Line, we need Instagram

Fengchezhuanbuting (@枫车转不停): I think there’s a way for Line to come in, but there’s already no room for Facebook

Liulianweihuabinggan (@榴莲威化饼干): There are a few apps that I hope never make it to the mainland … In the end, those who can all jump the Great Firewall. If it wasn’t there to block the others, they’d surge over and report everything back to the authorities

Fangtianyougou (@方田有沟): If Facebook hands the authority to examine and verify content to a Chinese partner firm, “China will be the biggest winner” [mocking a common formula for headlines in official media]. [Chinese]

Some users suggested rebranding, with one alluding to Xi Jinping’s call in February for state media to “take ‘Party’ as their surname”:

CD_Yim (@CD_Yim): If this is true, they should change the name to “book.” They’ve lost face.

Lihailewodege_ (@厉害了我的歌_): They should call it Partybook →_→

Liming_shouwang_zhe (@黎明守望者): Motherfucker, Facebook also has to take Party as its surname? [Chinese]

CDT cartoonist Badiucao proposed a new logo:

Another cartoon in a similar spirit has been deleted from Sina Weibo, according to the FreeWeibo monitoring site:

AdachushengzaiMeiguo (@Ada出生在美国): Facebook surnamed ‘Party,’ deletes posts at will, arbitrarily prohibits, perfectly loyal, please reconsider. [Chinese]

On Twitter, meanwhile, dozens of users scornfully contrasted Facebook’s apparent readiness to bow to Beijing with its reluctance to address the spread of fake news among users in America and elsewhere. By the U.S. election day earlier this month, fake news was substantially outperforming articles from mainstream news outlets on the platform. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially protested that “the idea that fake news on Facebook … influenced the election … is a pretty crazy idea.” But criticism continued to mount, with The New York Times warning Zuckerberg not to let “liars and con artists hijack his platform.” He responded on Facebook that “we do not want to be arbiters of truth,” and that company would prefer “erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible,” but said that the company was cautiously working to address the issue.

There has been no shortage of suggestions on ways to do this. According to some reports, Facebook already “absolutely [has] the tools to shut down fake news,” but has held off for fear of angering conservative users.

The U.S. election has also prompted renewed calls for information controls in China, where official campaigns against “rumor”—loosely and often politically defined—are well established. Officials reiterated the urgency of battling rumors and online extremism at the World Internet Conference last week, as Reuters’ Catherine Cadell reports:

Ren Xianling, the vice minister of China’s top internet authority, said on Thursday that the process was akin to “installing brakes on a car before driving on the road”.

Ren, number two at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), recommended using identification systems for netizens who post fake news and rumors, so they could “reward and punish” them.

The comments come as U.S. social networks Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc face a backlash over their role in the spread of false and malicious information generated by users, which some say helped sway the U.S. presidential election in favor of Republican candidate Donald Trump.

[…] Ma Huateng, the chairman and chief executive of Tencent Holdings Ltd, which oversees China’s most popular social networking app, WeChat, said Trump’s win sent an “alarm” to the global community about the dangers of fake news, a view echoed by other executives at the event. [Source]

An editorial in the state-run Global Times mocked the hypocrisy of the “Western media’s crusade against Facebook”:

[… M]edia platforms have the right to publish any information in the political field and cracking down on online rumors would confine freedom of speech. Isn’t this what the West advocates when it is at odds with emerging countries over Internet management? Why don’t they uphold those propositions any more?

China’s crackdown on online rumors a few years ago was harshly condemned by the West. It was a popular saying online that rumors could force truth to come out at that time, which morally affirmed the role of rumors. This argument was also hyped by Western media. Things changed really quickly, as the anxiety over Internet management has been transferred to the US.

[…] The Internet contains enormous energy, and the political risks that go along with it are unpredictable. China is on its way to strengthening Internet management, although how to manage it is another question. China is also right in demanding that US Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, abide by Chinese laws and be subject to supervision if they want to enter China market.

[…] Problems and conflicts caused by globalization and informationization have been unleashed in the Internet era, but the Western democratic system appears to be unable to address them. [Source]

But while some see the fake news pandemic as vindication of Chinese policy, others are unconvinced. At South China Morning Post last week, Jane Cai and Phoenix Kwong reported “Pony” Ma Huateng’s further statement at the WIC that “Tencent has always been strict in cracking down on fake news and we see it as very necessary.” But not all the Chinese executives in attendance shared his enthusiasm, they noted:

[…] Wu Wenhui, chief executive of China Reading, an online literature company, said regulators should not resort to extreme measures to tackle the problem unless it was absolutely necessary.

“The US incidents show the internet is more and more decentralised and people do not unanimously follow the opinions of experts,” Wu said.

“Regulators should respect the convenient platforms [of social media] for the public to express their opinions. They should also be open and be honest in communicating with the public,” he said. [Source]

Politico’s Jack Shafer, meanwhile, argued this week that “the cure for fake news is worse than the disease”:

[… T]he fake news moral panic looks to have legs, which means that somebody is likely to get hurt before it abates. Already, otherwise intelligent and calm observers are cheering plans set forth by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to censor users’ news feeds in a fashion that will eliminate fake news. Do we really want Facebook exercising this sort of top-down power to determine what is true or false? Wouldn’t we be revolted if one company owned all the newsstands and decided what was proper and improper reading fare?

Once established to crush fake news, the Facebook mechanism could be repurposed to crush other types of information that might cause moral panic. This cure for fake news is worse than the disease.

[…] Fake news is too important to be left to the Facebook remedy—Mark Zuckerberg is no arbiter of truth. First, we need to learn to live with a certain level of background fake news without overreacting. Next, we need to instruct readers on how to spot and avoid fake news, which many publications are already doing. A few years ago, Factcheck.org showed readers how to identify bogus email claims. Snopes does yeoman work in this area, as does BuzzFeed. Software wizards should be encouraged to create filters and tools, such as browser extensions, that sniff out bogusity. [Source]

Concerns about the concentration of information control powers in private hands have also arisen in China with, for example, a recent account suspension on Tencent’s WeChat platform over allegations that cheap roast duck came from diseased birds. From Oiwan Lam at Global Voices:

The WeChat account of Chinese news outlet News Breakfast was recently suspended for “spreading rumors.” News Breakfast has 400,000 subscribers in WeChat and is operated by East Day, a Shanghai city government-affiliated media outlet.

[…] The incident compelled Xu Shiping, the CEO of East Day, to write two open letters to Pony Ma Huateng, the chairman of WeChat’s parent company, Tencent, questioning the monopolized status of the Internet giant and its arbitrary power over online content and censorship. Like many other Chinese news outlets, News Breakfast publishes some stories only on WeChat, rather than publishing on its website and then promoting on the social media and content service.

[…] What is Tencent? It is an Internet company. It has a capital structure and cannot represent people’s interests […] In the past two years, Mr. Ma has been a guest of local governments which have provided corporate access to data which should be belong to the public. There is no evaluation of the capital value of such data access. […] Tencent’s monopoly is harmful to the state. Wait and see. Today it can exercise its unrestrained power on media outlets, tomorrow it will challenge state authority. […]

[…] If one day, all China’s media outlets are under the rule of Tencent, can we still have our “China Dream”? [Source]

Writing at Medium, ethnographer Christina Xu noted that false pro-Trump stories have proliferated in China, despite its strict information controls. Such stories, she suggested, are more a symptom than an underlying cause:

In an excellent series of tweets about rhetorical strategy, Bailey Poland wrote: “[Facts are] the support structure. It’s the foundation of reality on which an argument can be built, but it cannot be the whole argument.”

In China, that foundation of reality is eroded alongside trust in institutions previously tasked with upholding the truth. Contrary to popular sentiment in the US, Chinese readers don’t blindly trust the state-run media. Rather, they distrust it so much that they don’t trust any form of media, instead putting their faith in what their friends and family tell them. No institution is trusted enough to act as a definitive fact-checker, and so it’s easy for misinformation to proliferate unchecked.

This has been China’s story for decades. In 2016, it is starting to be the US’ story as well.

Propaganda that is blatant and issued from the top is easy to spot and refute; here in China, it’s literally printed on red banners your eyes learn to skip past. The spread of small falsehoods and uncertainty is murkier, more organic, and much harder to undo. The distortions of reality come in layers, each more surreal than the last. Fighting it requires more than just pointing out the facts; it requires restoring faith in a shared understanding of the truth. This is the lesson Americans need to learn, and fast. [Source]

Inside the Great Firewall? Download the CDT Browser Extension to access CDT from China without a VPN.

Cartoonist My Name is Police Chief (我的名字叫警长) imagines one former delegate from the northeastern province high-tailing it to his friend Two-Dog’s apartment. Two-Dog’s roommates, Police Chief and Deadfish, size up the new arrival. At first, they think the “refugee” faces famine back home. He does, in a way, just not an alimentary one:

Read the original Chinese here, and check out more cartoons by Police Chief translated by CDT.

Translation by Nick.

Human rights activists in Hong Kong, about a four-hour drive to the southwest, believe the crackdown could represent an unprecedented push to silence Wukan, whose villagers received international attention after an 2011 uprising led to authorities granting direct village-wide elections.

[…] Villagers, including old people, pelted police with bricks as they advanced with shields, batons and helmets, with clouds of tear gas wafting down the street, video footage seen by Reuters showed.

[…] One Wukan resident reached by Reuters by mobile phone said riot police hit people with batons, setting off tear gas grenades and firing rubber bullets at villagers, including old people.

He said police had entered the village in their “thousands”. Others said between 300 and 400 police were involved in the operation, including house-to-house searches.

“The riot police started attacking and shooting at us,” he said. “They are still fighting now. We want them to leave.” […] [Source]

Following initial reports on the ongoing clash, CDT resident cartoonist Badiucao has drawn the name of the village with bullet holes substituting one crucial stroke.

Blood Flows in Wukan, by Badiucao for CDT:

The small fishing village of Wukan captured international attention in 2011 after villagers launched anti-corruption protests against the official seizure of public land. When a protest leader died in detention that December, public anger reached a tipping point. Continuing demonstrations eventually led to local elections free from the direct Party oversight that normally characterizes the selection of village committees. While the protests and democratic concessions originally won public support, by 2014 many villagers had become disillusioned with the democratic experiment as many of those elected were forced out of office and former leaders regained their influence in local politics.

Lin Zuluan, elected village committee chief in the 2012 local elections and one of the only elected officials to maintain his post, was detained in June on suspicion of abuse of power and accepting bribes. Lin’s detention came the day before he was planning to petition higher authorities over the unresolved land disputes, and sparked a new wave of protest in the village. Small-scale daily protests continued in Wukan for months, with many villagers demanding the release of their former village chief. Lin was sentenced to 37 months in jail on September 9, and village protesters vowed to escalate demonstrations.

https://twitter.com/xinyanyu/status/775562167965847552

https://twitter.com/mrbaopanrui/status/775569274521788416

The clash came after authorities arrested 13 people involved in earlier demonstrations. For CNN, James Griffiths and Yuli Yang report, noting that enhanced security measures in the region have led to an information blackout and concern over villagers’ safety from rights organizations:

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, the 13 detained overnight were arrested for disrupting public order and inciting illegal assemblies.

“Their behaviors have severely affected local life and production and exerted a bad influence. Police have therefore arrested the 13 according to law, in an effort to safeguard the interest of the masses and restore order,” local police said in a statement published online.

[… Amnesty International’s Patrick] Poon said the village was now on lockdown, “no one can enter, information is blocked.”
“The atmosphere there is very tense,” he added.

[…] Poon said Amnesty is concerned that since information is no longer getting out, many more arrests and detentions could take place without being reported. [Source]

Tea Leaf Nation’s David Wertime writes that information controls on the resurgent demonstrations in Wukan mean that “most mainland Chinese have likely not heard much, or any, recent scuttlebutt about Wukan.” On Twitter, the BBC’s Stephen McDonell notes that all foreign journalists are also being turned away from Wukan:

#Chinese police stopping all foreign journalists from getting anywhere near #Wukan We were ordered to leave Even nearby Lufeng is no go zone

— Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) September 13, 2016

Coverage of the Wukan clash from the AP’s Nomaan Merchant notes an official statement on the arrest of the 13 villagers:

An official statement issued Tuesday said 13 villagers in Wukan were arrested, allegedly for inciting a mob and spreading rumors.

The statement levies several allegations at “a small number of lawless persons,” including disturbing school, preventing fishermen from working and hampering shopkeepers. It says officials tried to “educate and persuade” protest leaders, but that guidance was evidently disregarded.

“In order to safeguard the interests of the masses and restore the normal order of production and local people’s lives, local police decided to take action and apprehended them,” the statement said.

Chinese law requires official permission be granted for all protests, a condition that is almost never met. Large-scale protests are usually met with action intended to quell dissent. In recent decades, China has allowed a small number of elections for positions below the township level, though national and provincial party officials continue to be selected internally. [Source]

BBC News producer Xinyan Yu and others have been tweeting more images and video footage from the clash in Wukan

https://twitter.com/xinyanyu/status/775471148255571968

https://twitter.com/xinyanyu/status/775472310463651840

https://twitter.com/xinyanyu/status/775498210911608832

https://twitter.com/xinyanyu/status/775543936765030400

https://twitter.com/wukanwukan11/status/775601108098043904

https://twitter.com/fdark77/status/775674522607325184

The New York Times’ Patrick Boehler tweets evidence of villagers’ continuing utilization of tech-savvy to tell their side of the Wukan story—a major element that allowing the village to capture international attention back in 2011:

https://twitter.com/mrbaopanrui/status/775571109764669440

Chinese national flags have been abundant in 2011 and recent Wukan demonstrations as protesters attempt to highlight that their grievances are with local corruption and not the central Party leadership.

For more images from the ongoing standoff in Wukan, see a recent post from the Hong Kong Free Press’ Catherine Lai, and stay tuned to Twitter users @fdark77, @wukanwukan11, and @xinyanyu.

“My Name is Police Chief” (我的名字叫警长), whose cartoons on nationalist protests, the squeeze the Great Firewall puts on Chinese scholars, and the aphrodisiac properties of the Communist Party constitution have been featured on CDT in the past, offered the following comment:

For CDT, cartoonist Badiucao (巴丢草) portrays Wang Yu’s confession as one made at gunpoint, under control of a Party puppet master:

“Won’t Acknowledge, Won’t Recognize, Won’t Accept,” by Badiucao (巴丢草) for CDT.

In Badiucao’s illustration, an arm adorned with a hammer and sickle holds a gun to Wang’s head. She is a reluctant marionette, eyes closed as she waits for her strings to be pulled. 

Wang has yet to be seen publicly since her announced release, and the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group—and others—have expressed doubts that she is genuinely free or that her confession was made of her own accord.

In her interview, Wang used language reminiscent of state media blaming “foreign forces” for training Chinese activists to “attack” the Chinese government, and including a castigation of her colleague Zhou Shifeng. Wang Yu told the Oriental Daily that she “won’t acknowledge, won’t recognize, and won’t accept” foreign human rights awards, claiming, “I am Chinese. I only accept the leadership of the Chinese government. I don’t accept the award now and won’t accept it in the future,” one of many parts of her confession that echoed official language. (The phrasing “won’t acknowledge, won’t recognize, and won’t accept” was recently seen in Beijing’s official condemnation of an international tribunal’s ruling against China’s claims in the South China Sea.) Wang has recently been selected for both the Ludovic Trarieux Human Rights Prize and the American Bar Association’s inaugural International Human Rights Award. Psychologist Tang Yinghong alludes to Wang’s plight in a recent WeChat post in which he discusses Soviet writer Boris Pasternak’s acceptance, then refusal, of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The release of legal assistant Zhao Wei last month was made under similar circumstances; her “confession” was relayed in an interview with the South China Morning Post, and her whereabouts since her release are still unknown. Several other lawyers and activists detained in the “Black Friday” crackdown are going on trial this week. Political cartoonist Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒) interprets the highly-publicized confessions of human rights lawyers and activists as a violent farce:

By Rebel Pepper (变态辣椒)

A smartly dressed man, perhaps a lawyer, wears the mask of comedy and holds up his arms in front of a rifle disguised as a reporter’s microphone. Rebel Pepper, who has been living in exile in Japan for two years, says this about his drawing:

After the CCP released Zhao Wei, she posted a few controversial Weibo posts before going silent. No one knows her whereabouts. Wang Yu’s bail is quite similar to what befell Zhao Wei. She gave an interview to restricted media, condemning foreign forces for using her. She even criticized foreign forces for taking her son hostage. Many have been baffled by this inversion of the truth. But the microphone before her was really the barrel of the CCP’s gun. When coerced, people will say a lot of things that go against their true feelings. It’s hard for me to imagine being in prison for over a year, the changes that a person goes through under harsh conditions. This was my original intention for this comic. More people will be forced to confess on camera after Wang Yu. As long as the CCP’s rule continues, such public spectacles and humiliation will never stop.

赵威被中共释放后发了几条引发极大争议的微博后又销声匿迹了，没有人知道她的下落。这次王宇律师被取保候审，和赵威的遭遇非常相似，接受限定的媒体采访，谴责境外势力对她的利用，甚至指责是境外势力绑架了她的儿子作为人质，这样的颠倒黑白会让很多人困惑，然而采访她的麦克风也正是中共的枪口，人在被胁迫的情况下会说出很多违背本意的话，我也很难想象被囚禁的一年多时间，残酷的环境会让人发生什么样的变化，这是创作这张漫画的初衷，王宇之后还会有更多人被迫在媒体上认罪，只要中共的统治继续存在，这样的公开示众和羞辱不会停止。

Both Rebel Pepper’s and Badiucao’s cartoons show sympathy for the confessor, and express the belief that the words in their confessions are not really their own.

Artist Ai Weiwei satirized Wang’s confession through a series of Instagram videos in which he or others mocked the words she used. Chantal Yuen reports for Hong Kong Free Press:

Ai Weiwei’s “burst out laughing” at the motherland also provoked several parodies. His imitators face the camera, like Ai, declare that they have decided to forget their pasts and “burst out laughing” at their motherland. This is a play on a phrase that Wang Yu used. In her interview, she said that she wants her son to “serve the country.” The Chinese word for “to serve” sounds exactly the same as the word for “to burst out laughing.” [Source]

On his blog, legal scholar Jerome Cohen comments on the public confessions, and how the “confessors” may be coerced into making statements that they do not believe:

It’s obviously too soon to analyze with confidence but it sounds like another of the curious deals that are being struck between PRC oppressors and courageous but hapless human rights victims, deals involving the welfare of spouses, children, parents, lovers etc as well as the target whose captivity and torture are at stake.

This is all so sad, not only for the oppressed, broken victims but also for China and its standing in the world. These pathetic, ludicrous “confessions” and charges are obviously designed for a Chinese audience, but tens of millions of Chinese are not foolish enough to believe these farces.

Yet the damage to China that these torture-inspired fairy tales inflict abroad is incalculable. Does the Chinese leadership not see this? Xi Jinping is holding himself and the country up to increasing worldwide ridicule. This is the Chinese Communist Party’s distinctive contribution to the playbook of international Communist abuse of the legal system and promises to rank in notoriety with Stalin’s infamous purge trials, although so far no Chinese victims have been formally executed! [Source]

 Anne Henochowicz contributed to this post.

Cartoonist “Police Chief” (警长) critiques the plight of Chinese scholars, squeezed by “the Wall” as well as pressure from the Ministry of Education to keep “Western values” out of textbooks and classrooms. If Fang Binxing thinks “our technology has failed,” why not help scholars scale the wall?

Translation by Nick.

Translation by Nick. [Chinese]

At The Wall Street Journal, Chun Han Wong rounds up state media attempts to cool the fervor of nationalism on the streets of China:

“In the age of economic globalization, many products used in daily living, big and small, are ‘hybrids,’” using parts from both the U.S. and China, the People’s Daily said in an essay published Tuesday on its WeChat social-media account. “You couldn’t boycott them even if you wished.”

“With so many ordinary Chinese folk working in the [fast-food] industry supply chain, are you going to feed them if they lose their jobs?” the newspaper wrote. “The internet was invented by the U.S., so should we boycott the internet and retreat into the pre-internet age?”

State-run China Daily, for its part, decried the anti-KFC protests as a show of “jingoism that does a disservice to the spirit of devotion to the nation.”

“Patriotism is not the hotchpotch of actions that self-claimed patriots select to do,” the English-language newspaper said in a Wednesday commentary. “Nor can it be used as a label to provide self-justification and legal grounds for extreme actions that violate the law.”

The Communist Youth League went further in its criticism, alleging that some protesters were antigovernment elements seeking to discredit well-meaning patriots by staging outlandish demonstrations. [Source]

More on simultaneous state media condemnations of both the tribunal’s ruling and the anti-KFC protests, and on online counter-protests from KFC customers, from the AP:

Along with the KFC protests, images have circulated online of young Chinese wearing scarves emblazoned with patriotic slogans smashing their iPhones in protest over the ruling. Such actions are generally ascribed to the internet-savvy “angry youth” born in the 1980s or after and raised on a steady diet of aggressive nationalism.

Yet, the KFC protests have also sparked a backlash online with some of the fast-food restaurant customers posting photos of themselves sitting in front of a bucket of chicken with axes or other weapons and signs reading “Patriotic hooligans, try harassing me and I’ll take you out.”

[…] Since it was handed down, the government and state media have kept up a steady drumbeat of criticism of the Philippines, the US and others and repeatedly attacked the integrity of the Hague-based tribunal. [Source]

The Hong Kong Free Press’ Chantal Yuen reports on municipal authorities’ efforts to dissuade protests in a Jiangsu city, and on state media attempts to encourage order:

Chinese authorities in Lianyungang, a city in Jiangsu province, have said that citizens should “respect the law, not participate in illegal assembly, rallies, demonstrations [and] not believe or spread rumours” in light of recent protests outside Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) branches.

[…] According to Beijing News, Huaian police said that those who are expressing their patriotism deserve to be recognised but they should not cross the legal border and should not do things that are too extreme. [Source]

Sixth Tone, a flashy state-run new media venture, reported on the wave of nationalistic displays outside of KFC outlets, and on online public anger expressed towards those who organized the demonstrations. The report has been taken down, presumably in line with central propaganda directives not to hype the demonstrations, but is still available via Google cache:

U.S. fast food giant KFC, which by the end of 2015 had more than 5,000 outlets in China, has become the target of such activism, with protestors outside stores brandishing banners labeling KFC customers traitors, among other things.

Though rejection of the arbitration award has been almost universal within China, social media users were quick to call into question the actions of staff of a training center who were reported to have led a delegation of young children to conduct a protest outside a KFC outlet in the country’s eastern Shandong province on July 19. Photos posted to microblog platform Weibo on Tuesday show a group of young children standing before a KFC store in the city of Tengzhou, wearing red caps and white shirts emblazoned with a red map of China. That post has been deleted, but a cached version was available as of Wednesday.

Following speculation by social media users and an article on online news outlet Sohu that called into question the veracity of the report, the same Weibo user — “Pi Ren Zhou Yu” — released a short video in the early hours of Wednesday morning showing children shouting “Long live China,” led by a male adult voice. The video was embedded in a post entitled “The Tengzhou School Students Boycott Incident: Just Who Is Telling Lies.”

[…] Reactions on social media were more scathing of the actions of the protest’s organizers. “Poisoning the next generation. It’s mean and shameless, using kids to carry out bullshit demands on adults,” wrote the author of the Tuesday post’s top-voted comment. “How did they become teachers? Did they inform the parents of this beforehand?” questioned another. [Source]

While some online have reportedly lashed out against instigators, others have rallied to attack perceived support of the tribunal’s decision. The Hong Kong Free Press reports on Chinese netizen comments to a Japanese YouTuber’s recent video:

Japanese YouTuber Yuka Kinoshita, who is known for consuming large quantities of various food items on camera, has been subjected to the wrath of Chinese netizens after posting a video of herself eating 137 bananas on Saturday.

Internet users from China questioned whether Kinoshita was eating bananas that originated from Philippines, and if 137 bananas was an allusion to China’s 1.37 billion population, Ming Pao reported. The video was posted shortly after the South China Sea ruling last week.

“During this sensitive period, you eat 137 bananas from the Philippines to insult China – do you have brains? Do you think us Chinese people can be easily bullied?” one comment said. [Source]

As authorities attempt to cool down the public anger, the South China Morning Post’s Natalie Mu reports that a Chinese tech company has threatened to sack any employee who buys the soon-to-be released iPhone 7, and to reward those who replace their Apple phone with a China-made device:

Hangzhou Bina Industrial Technology Company, which employs 50 people, issued its stern warning in what it called a “Patriotic Notice”, which was sent to all employees on Monday, the news portal Sohu.com reported.

[…] The move appears to be in response to widespread anger on mainland social media over what appeared to be an apparent iPhone software “glitch.

When iPhone users typed out the Chinese pinyin word “jichen”, meaning “hit and sink”, the word “China” would automatically appear as the first recommended word of choice.

[… In addition to promising iPhone 7 owners a pink slip,] it also said it would pay bonuses of 1,000 yuan (HK$1,160) to members of staff who replaced their iPhone 4 with a mainland-brand phone, 1,500 yuan if they replaced their iPhone 5 and 2,500 yuan for exchanging an iPhone 6. Mainland media has reported Apple rejecting the online claims that is was anti-Chinese. […] [Source]

[This post was corrected to clarify that the ruling was issued by an international tribunal set up under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, not the Permanent Court of Arbitration.]

On Weibo, MeiYouYangXiansheng (@没有羊先生) imagined a flowchart gracing the Global Times’ newsroom walls and guiding an editorial stance that often defends China from accused injustice, lashes out at foreign governments for supposed conspiratorial plots, or draws attention to similar injustice in other nations.    

MeiYouYangXiansheng (@没有羊先生): #NarrativeMadeInChina Discussing issues in the manner of Global Times.

[Chinese]

Many of China’s 87 million Communist Party members – including grassroots government employees and senior executives at state-owned enterprises – are hand copying its 15,000-word constitution as part of a wider campaign to boost party loyalty.

The 100-day campaign to hand copy the entire constitution was launched in March on a social media account of the People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, but it has caught public attention after a newlywed couple were photographed writing out paragraphs on their wedding night.

[…] The couple, both employees at the Nanchang Railway Bureau, decided to “put down paper and open up the party constitution to copy and to leave fond memories of their wedding night”, according to an article and a series of photographs published on Monday on a social media account operated by the department.

The article soon went viral online, with some internet users questioning if their pictures were staged. Others described the exercise as pretentious. […] [Source]

You can view the steadfast Party members’ wedding night photos at QQ news, one of many sites hosting the gallery. The New York Times’ Chris Buckley relays netizen reactions to the newlyweds, situating the constitution copying drive into President Xi’s ongoing Party loyalty and pro-Party propaganda campaigns:

“On the wedding night, the bridegroom did not rejoice in his great friendship with the bride and do what we love to do,” wrote one popular commentator, Wang Wusi, in a satirical essay that was widely circulated online.

“Hostile foreign forces will certainly exploit this act of copying out the party Constitution on a wedding night, and they will stir up mockery of it,” he presciently warned. “The broad numbers of party members must make a stand.”

[…] The Nanchang railway bureau insisted that the event truly happened and was the voluntary doing of the couple, said a report on Sohu, a Chinese news website. Party organizations have been encouraging members and others to join a 100-day campaign to write out the party Constitution.

Already, though, the phrase “copying out the party Constitution” is catching on in Chinese popular culture in ways that propaganda officials did not conceive. [Source]

CDT Chinese has collected more netizen reactions, a few of which are translated here. Weibo user @hnjhj commented,”‘Baby, it’s our wedding night. Aren’t you feeling a bit dirty?’ ‘Yes. Let’s copy the Party Constitution.'” Lüfengguming (@绿凤孤鸣) wrote, “With the Party in their hearts, the newlyweds forgot about their crotches,” playing on the homophonic relationship between the character for “Party” (dǎng 党) and that for “crotch” (dāng 裆). Netizen j-jzhongjiezhe (@j-j终结者) notes that their loyalty can also be seen in the day they chose for their wedding, May 16, which shares the calendar with another notable anniversary, “They got married on the same day as the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Cultural Revolution! Awesome!”

On WeChat, cartoonist 我的名字叫警长 (which translates to “My Name is Police Chief”) also poked fun at the event, imagining the tactic as a CCP-era folk tactic for male virility: