Over the past few months, China has seen a rise in dissenting voices protesting against one-party rule and calls for democratic reform and the boycotting of the state TV broadcaster.
The latest dissident to pick a fight with the government is a Beijing company executive who began proceedings Monday to file a lawsuit against an Internet provider that blocked access to his blog.
Wang Zhaojun (汪兆钧), 60, a former standing committee member of the Anhui Province People’s Political and Consultative Conference, posted on his blog an essay calling for political reform.
Wang instigated proceedings on the ground that, by blocking access to the blog, the provider violated the Chinese Constitution, which states that citizens “enjoy freedom of speech.” Wang is demanding that the provider unblock access to the Web site.
Many Chinese bloggers are publicly supporting Wang’s action in their blog writings, like this one:
“My capacity is limited at this moment. I can only pay my respect to this old man, and say one sentence: ‘Mr. Wang, we support you!'”
“在我自己没有其他能力的时候，我只能对一个老人，表达我由衷的敬意。并且说一句话：汪先生，我们支持您！”
Chinese blog search engines have already blocked Wang’s name as a search word.
