Eight suspects have been arrested and charged with using modified pornographic photos in an attempt to extort 4.5 million yuan (US$724,050) from government officials, corporate executives and managers, prosecutors in central China’s Hunan Province said yesterday.

Prosecutors in Shuangfeng County said the gang used PhotoShop computer software to modify the photos to make them appear as if the victims were in them, and sent them to their targets. They had received 255,000 yuan before they were captured by police.

The eight suspects, all natives of Shuangfeng, began using such photos to extort money in 2011. They mailed more than 210 letters containing fake pornographic photos in the past two years.

Prosecutors said more than 150 unsent letter were seized. The number and details of the victims were not disclosed.

More recent reports claim as many as 37 have so far been arrested in Shuangfeng county for trying to blackmail officials with doctored pornography. Global Times reports that this practice spreads far beyond Shuangfeng, describes local authorities’ attempts to dissuade such blackmail tactics by posting public slogans on billboards, and encourages officials across the country to follow suit:

“Let’s work together to launch a ‘people’s war’ against blackmailers using Photoshop on sex photos!” is a slogan that can be seen every 50 meters in Shuangfeng, a small county in Hunan Province where police this month arrested 10 people in a ring using fake sex photos to blackmail officials.

The billboards have replaced the “long live Chairman Mao” slogans that plastered cities across China back in the 1950s.

[...]Unfortunately, not all governments are as determined as Shuangfeng in the “people’s war” on fake sex photos, which is why blackmailers have become more brazen in recent years.

[...]If officials across China are serious about nipping the problem of fake sex photos in the bud, they should follow Shuangfeng’s lead and launch similar campaigns to crackdown on cyber blackmailers.

France 24 has more on similar blackmail attempts across the country and local campaigns to dissuade the practice, before noting that, in the wake of recent highly-publisized sex scandals, some are wondering if the public campaigns aren’t a means to guard against coming official impropriety:

Of course, in a country where the authorities themselves make frequent use of Photoshop to alter reality (see examples here and here), such cases are not limited to Shuangfeng. A recent one in eastern Zheijang province made international headlines when a man was arrested after allegedly attempting to blackmail more than 40 government officials with altered pornographic pictures. And in Xing’an County, in southwestern Guangxi province, the local Land and Resources Bureau took an unusual measure to deter troublemakers: they blurred photos of their officials on their website, reportedly to deter blackmailers.

Some online commentators have wondered if this new billboard campaign could have another, more subtle purpose: getting the public to think that all photos of officials involved in apparent sex scandals are fakes. Indeed, China has been rocked by a series of such scandals, ranging from orgies to sex tapes involving mistresses – no Photoshop involved.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blackmail, corrupt officials, extortion, Photoshop, sex scandals
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With his five cellphones constantly ringing, it is not easy these days to get the undivided attention of Zhu Ruifeng, a self-styled citizen journalist whose freelance campaign against graft has earned him pop-star acclaim and sent a chill through Chinese officialdom.

[…] A former migrant worker with a high school education, Mr. Zhu has become an overnight celebrity in China in the two months since he posted online secretly recorded video of an 18-year-old woman having sex with a memorably unattractive 57-year-old official from the southwestern municipality of Chongqing. The official lost his job. Mr. Zhu gained a million or so new microblog followers.

The takedown was just the opening act, Mr. Zhu says. He promises to release six more sex videos that he predicts will make a number of other men run for cover. “I’m fighting a war,” he said with characteristic bombast, his voice a near-shriek. “Even if they beat me to death, I won’t give up my sources or the videos.”

[…] Mr. Zhu, who began his Web site in 2006, largely relies on whistle-blowers to funnel damning evidence to him. Through the years, he said, he has exposed 100 officials, bringing down more than a third of them. He has been threatened and beaten; more than once, he says, he has been offered huge sums of money to delete an incriminating post from his site, which is called People’s Supervision.

Zhu’s “characteristic bombast” may seem excessive, but is at least in part a matter of self-defense: by courting attention from traditional and social media, he hopes to deter attempts to silence him. That he credits Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption speeches, the Chinese Constitution and his own love of country with inspiring his activities may confer some measure of additional protection.

Nevertheless, his crusade has cost him. He has chosen to end his marriage, he says, rather than see his wife, a P.L.A. officer, suffer retaliation from his adversaries. “To be honest,” he told The Times’ Jonah Kessel, “I would like to tend to the big family in sacrifice of the small family.”

Kessel has also posted outtakes from their conversation on Vimeo, including an extended account of a recent police visit to Zhu’s Beijing home. Chongqing authorities appear determined to contain the sex tape scandal by acquiring Zhu’s remaining videos, but as in the recent New York Times hacking attacks, identifying sources seems to be their primary goal. From Tom Lasseter at McClatchy:

Powerful interests were searching for his sources, he explained over lunch last Friday [January 25th]. Police detained one contact in the southwestern city of Chongqing, where the scandal had erupted, Zhu said. They traced a second source to Henan province, hundreds of miles away, and had questioned that person at least twice.

Two days after that conversation, the police showed up at Zhu’s home in Beijing. They banged on his door Sunday night and demanded that he come with them. He refused but reported to a police station Monday morning, where he was held for more than seven hours. Police officers from Chongqing pressed him to hand over five sex recordings he hasn’t made public and to tell them the identities of his informants. They threatened that “if you don’t present evidence, you will be in violation of national law,” according to Zhu’s account.

The pressure on Zhu suggests that despite Communist Party rhetoric about an all out campaign against corruption, limits remain. The party’s leader, Xi Jinping, said shortly after being installed in November that failing to crack down on corruption would risk the downfall of the state. But while Beijing has dismissed some wayward officials and canceled extravagant banquets that stoked resentment among average Chinese, it so far seems set on keeping a tight grip to keep the process from spinning out of control.

Undaunted, Zhu has offered a cash reward to anyone who can verify the identity of a state-owned enterprise president allegedly caught on one of the videos. Meanwhile, the woman in the videos was formally charged with extortion last week, though she too has been hailed—perhaps less plausibly than in Zhu’s case—as an anti-corruption crusader. From Keith Zhai at the South China Morning Post:

“Zhao was officially arrested on December 31 for extortion,” Zhang said yesterday, adding that she had been “brainwashed” by a company she left in 2009 to secretly record herself having sex with officials to give the firm leverage. “After all, she was young and a victim herself.”

[…] Zhao has drawn support on social media, with internet users hailing her as a heroine for exposing corrupt officials.

Many have compared Zhao’s case with that of Deng Yujiao , a hotel waitress who in 2009 stabbed to death a local party official in Hubei and wounded another after they tried to force themselves on her.

Deng was charged with assault, rather than murder, but walked free on grounds of diminished responsibility after having received widespread support from the online community.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-corruption, Beijing, bloggers, Chongqing, citizen journalism, citizen journalist, constitution, corrupt officials, Deng Yujiao, extortion, journalistic ethics, lei zhengfu, migrant workers, muckraking, PLA, sex scandals, Xi Jinping, Zhu Ruifeng
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“I also turned down their demand for the original version of those already exposed clips, for the safety of the person from Chongqing’s police bureau who fed me the information,” said Zhu, adding that he is not ready to publish the remaining evidence, as time is needed to authenticate them.

The negotiations came after Zhu claimed some local officials involved in the scandal haven’t yet been netted and accused local police of a coverup and destroying evidence.

[…] Si Weijiang, a Shanghai-based lawyer, told the Global Times there is no crime of withholding evidence, and that the process to compel Zhu to be a witness is not clear. The police have no right to forcibly request the evidence, he said.

The videos were recorded as part of an extortion racket targeting a number of Chongqing officials, 11 of whom have now been dismissed as a result. Former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai and his police chief Wang Lijun reportedly covered up an earlier investigation into the case. While Zhu says that his source is associated with the Chongqing police, the police now claim that he may have obtained the videos from a member of the gang itself.

The Washington Post’s Wang Juan highlighted Zhu’s use of social media for protection:

Zhu’s lawyer, Li, said he believed the policemen originally intended to detain Zhu when they tried to get into his house Sunday night but were forced to change their plan once Zhu’s online posts for help and calls to Chinese and foreign media drew widespread attention.

[…] Before leaving his home for the police station on Monday, Zhu posted a picture online of a signed legal document. The document named several people he was officially authorizing as his lawyers and representatives and said that any confession or change of lawyers after he is imprisoned would likely be made under duress. Mindful of several recent high-profile cases in which detainees have been cut off entirely from the outside world and with their lawyers switched out for government-friendly ones, Zhu said in the document that the lawyers he named are the only ones he wants, “even if I later write a letter in blood asking for a change of lawyers.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Chongqing corruption, drinking tea, extortion, Global Times, journalistic ethics, lawyers, lei zhengfu, police, Si Weijiang, sina weibo, social media, Wang Lijun, Zhu Ruifeng
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On Saturday, meanwhile, the mayor of Chongqing proclaimed the “banishment” of Bo’s influence from his former power base. From Ben Blanchard at Reuters:

Speaking at the opening session of the city’s largely rubber stamp legislature, Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan, who had served with Bo when Bo was the city’s party boss, described the past year’s events as “extraordinary”.

“Against such an exceptional backdrop and complex circumstances, we resolutely followed the decisions of the party … and worked hard to banish the serious impact of the Bo Xilai and Wang Lijun cases,” Huang said, according to a transcript of his speech carried by Chinese news websites.

[…] “We must strictly define authority in accordance with the law and … never allow any group or individual to have special rights which exceed the constitution or the law,” Huang said.

Part of the exorcism has involved the rehabilitation of netizens, lawyers, policemen and others wrongly prosecuted for crossing Bo and Wang, his former police chief. Radio Free Asia reported on Friday, for example, that journalist Gao Yingpiao had been released early from a three year prison term thought to be linked to a series of critical blog posts. On the other hand, The New York Times’ Edward Wong reported that the gang behind last year’s notorious Lei Zhengfu sex tape scandal had escaped prosecution under Bo’s rule, and has only now been brought to light.

China’s state news media reported on Friday details of a sex extortion ring that brazenly operated “honey traps” in the southwest metropolis of Chongqing for several years. The widening scandal, which first emerged late last year, has led to the dismissals of at least 11 officials of the Communist Party, the government or state-owned companies for having sex with women from the ring and then being blackmailed by the men who had set up the snares.

[…] The sex scandal might have come out earlier, but Bo Xilai, the Chongqing party chief at the time, and Wang Lijun, his police chief, buried the results of an investigation into the ring, according to news reports. Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang were both felled last year by the fallout from the murder of a British business executive that the party said was arranged by Mr. Bo’s wife; Mr. Bo is expected to be tried soon on a wide range of criminal charges. While the two scandals are unrelated, the airing of the blackmail ring at this time could reflect a decision by the Chinese leadership to highlight other problems in Chongqing under Mr. Bo’s rule.

There are apparent limits to the new transparency surrounding the case, however. After receiving a sudden visit from security officers on Sunday, Zhu Ruifeng, the blogger who originally brought the Lei Zhengfu tape to light, believes that Chongqing authorities are aggressively moving to tie up loose ends. From William Wan at The Washington Post:

“They are standing outside my door right now, knocking and even kicking the door, telling me to open it,” he said in a frantic phone call to a reporter.

As he talked, men could be heard shouting in the background. “I think they’re coming to take me away,” Zhu said. “I talked to too many in the media and it must have irritated someone.”

[…] The men claimed to have come from a local Beijing security station, but Zhu suspected that they had actually come from Chongqing and that their true intent was to take him away and recover the five additional sex tapes he had threatened to release.

Just recently, a source told him Chongqing authorities had destroyed all other recordings related to the extortion case in an attempted cover-up, leaving only the video Zhu had already made public.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, extortion, Guiyang, Huang Qifan, sex scandals, trials, Wang Lijun
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Despite treatment from expert doctors in the past seven days and nights, Yue Yue finally died from severe injuries, said Su Lei, dean of the hospital, at a press conference held at 8:45 releasing the conditions at the hospital where Yue Yue was treated.

Yue Yue’s parents went to the hospital to see her for the last time at 3:00 Friday morning. Her mother was too grieved to deal with the little girl’s body and only her father was doing that with the help of doctors.

The incident, which generated more than 4.5 million posts on Sina Weibo this week, has stoked outrage, condemnation and intense debate across China over the reaction of bystanders to public injury. Comments continued today upon news of Yue Yue’s death. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

The death of Yue Yue was one of the most popular topics on China’s weibos — microblogging sites similar to Twitter — today as people expressed sorrow and anger over the incident.

“Farewell to little Yue Yue. There are no cars in heaven,” wrote one microblogger on Sina’s weibo.

“Yue Yue was consumed for a week by the fake kindness of netizens… All the wishes are fake and only the 18 passers-by are real. Farewell, and do not be born in China in your next life,” another weibo user wrote.

The tragedy has generated momentum for the passage of laws to punish those who refuse to help people in distress. From China Daily:

At least 10 Party and government departments and organizations in Guangdong, including the province’s commission on politics and law, the women’s federation, the academy of social sciences and the Communist Youth League, have started discussions about punishing those who refuse to help people who clearly need it.

They are also seeking feedback from the public as to whether legislation should be enacted.

Zhu Yongping, a lawyer at Datong Law Firm, said lawyers will discuss the idea next month and push for the legislation.

“Many laws, including forbidding drunken driving, in China have been passed after high-profile individual cases, and now is the right time to legislate against refusing to help people,” Zhu said on Wednesday.

Yesterday, the Economic Observer asked its staff of young Chinese translators to reflect on the indifference of the passersby and its meaning for today’s China. From one of the respondents:

I believe it is not an isolated event and it reflects deeper problems within Chinese society. It is difficult for ordinary people to live a safe and sound life. Though China’s economy is gaining strength, problems emerge concerning the quality of its growth. Rules that are supposed to guide people’s behavior are missing. For example, people breathe polluted air, eat gutter oil, drink tainted milk, buy apartments at freakishly high prices and travel in trains that may crash. People can do evil things and get away with them because rules are easily altered and the supervision system is not working.

Yesterday, TIME’s Austin Ramzy called on a century-old short story from Chinese writer Lu Xun to demonstrate issues which have haunted Chinese society long before the events of the past week:

Will Yue Yue’s case make any difference? Lu Xun, one of China’s greatest modern writers, poses a similar possibility in a short story from nearly a century ago. The 1920 piece, from his collection Call to Arms, is titled “A Small Incident,” and it describes a man who hires a rickshaw that collides with an old woman. I ‘ve posted a 1972 translation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang below the jump. It is just 700 words long, but like Yue Yue’s case it raises questions of responsibility, morality, money, liability and the hope that a sad incident will lead to change.

See also coverage of the flood of donations to Yue Yue’s family, and a Sina Weibo count opened in the name of the mother despite her not knowing how to use the site.

Sources:

- “Injured toddler shows signs of stability” from China Daily

- “Yue Yue dies from injuries” from China Daily

- “Chinese toddler dies a week after being hit by cars, ignored by passersby” from CNN

- “China’s hit-run scandal: Yue Yue dies” from The Sydney Morning Herald

- “Law mulled to make aid compulsory” from China Daily

- “Are Chinese Heartless? EO Translators on Yue Yue” from Economic Observer

- “‘A Small Incident’: Echoes of China’s Tragic Yue Yue Case from Almost a Century Ago” from TIME

- “Donations pour in for toddler in hit-and-run” from China.org

- “Yueyue’s parents: We’re not on Sina Weibo!” from the Shanghaiist

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: altruism, extortion, netizens, online public opinion, road accidents, road safety
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Footage from a surveillance camera presented on local TV shows Yue Yue was walking in a hardware market in Foshan, Guangdong province, on Thursday, about 100 meters away from her home, when she was run over by a van at 5:26 pm. Three passers-by who noticed the injured girl chose to ignore her.

The girl was then run over by a light-duty truck. The riders of four electric bicycles, a tricycle and three passers-by all chose to ignore her and no one at a shop close to the scene came to her aid.

Seven minutes after she was first hit by the van, a 57-year-old rag collector noticed the girl and moved her to the curb. The woman then tried talking to the shopkeeper but received no response. She then walked into the street and a few seconds later, the girl’s mother appears and rushes away with the girl.

…

According to reports the van driver had just split up from his girlfriend and was talking on his mobile phone when he hit the girl.

“If she is dead, I may pay only about 20,000 yuan ($3,125). But if she is injured, it may cost me hundreds of thousands yuan,” said the driver over the phone to the media, before he gave himself up to the police.

A chilling video of a news report has appeared on Youku showing security camera footage of the entire event, and waves of comments have emerged on Chinese social media sites (translated via chinaSMACK). While netizens have unanimously condemned the driver of the van which initially struck the girl, opinion toward the bystanders has varied. Many comments refer to a 2006 case in which a resident of Nanjing, Peng Yu, helped an old woman who had fallen only to have her later accuse him of causing the injury and win her claim when a judge ruled that Peng would not have helped the woman up if he had not caused the fall. 

The “Nanjing Peng Yu” incident has produced a fear of extortion among Chinese who witness public injury, especially in recent cases involving the elderly. From a September Xinhua News report:

An eery echo is found in a more recent event that took place in Rugao, east China’s Jiangsu province on Aug 26: A bus driver went to the help of an 81-year-old woman he saw lying on the ground by the side of her overturned tricycle. She eventually told the police that he was the one that hit her. Fortunately the bus was equipped with a video camera that showed that the old woman was lying. Sales of video cameras for cars have reportedly shot up in the days since.

The same street stunt recurs—-an old person falls down, a woman who happens to be on the spot will have to think twice before springing to the rescue. Seeing a fallen oldster, to lend a hand or not, it is a question! 

In today’s China, it seems, a good deed can be compounded by extortion and even legally punished. That explains why Samaritans are thin on the ground these days in a country that enjoys time-honored fine traditions of being ready to help those in need. A recent online poll found in China that 84 percent of the polled would not offer assistance to a fallen oldster on the street for fear of extortion.

“It is not always necessary to help old people immediately after they fall down, depending on different conditions and symptoms they have shown,” according to the “timely” guidelines published early in the month by the Ministry of Health.

See also recent CDT coverage of netizens’ responses to a dramatic rescue of a swimmer in Hangzhou’s West Lake, and more on China’s “Good Samaritan problem”.

Update: While Yue Yue’s family awaits test results as their daughter remains in critical condition on Tuesday, The New York Times reports on the eruption of comments on social media and the debate surrounding the proper response of bystanders to accidents:

The story rocketed to the top of Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter, over the weekend, Shanghaiist reported. Many saw in the casual disregard of those who did not help a symbol of an almost Hobbesian state of struggle, while others argued that Good Samaritans have been punished in the past for intervening in such episodes.

“This society is seriously ill. Even cats and dogs shouldn’t be treated so heartlessly,” one person posted to Sina Weibo, Agence-France Presse reported.

Another poster, named Johnny Yao and quoted by The Daily Telegraph, writes: “Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying? This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China, are we even rescuable?”

The China Media Project notes that traditional media have also chimed in:

One of the lengthiest reports comes from the official, but also very commercial, Guangzhou Daily. The report quotes a number of experts, including Fudan University sociologist Gu Xiaoming (顾晓明), who said that people had lost their “reverence for life” and felt “indifferent or even cold about life or death” owing to the new complexities of Chinese social life. Faced with a situation like Xiao Yueyue’s, Gu said, many people will not know what to do: “People will rationalize [the situation] and think, if I try to save her but she dies because I can’t, how will that make me responsible?”

Chen Xianmei (陈贤妹), the woman who eventually did come to Xiao Yueyue’s aid, told Guangzhou Daily that she asked four or five people who has stalls along the street whether they knew whose child this was. She says they all said, “It’s not mine,” and no one offered any help. She then shouted in all directions, she says, asking for help or information, and only then did the child’s mother come running.

At People’s Daily Online today, columnist Li Hongbing (李泓冰) writes: “Any one of us might become the ‘passerby’ at the side of Xiao Yueyue. Please, stop. Move her out of the center of the road. Or extend a hand of comfort, carrying her away from danger.”

The China Daily ran a timely story today of a 15-year old under arrest in Wuhan for harming a woman he claims he was simply helping up after she was struck by an electric car.

Sources:

- “Hospital offers little hope for girl’s survival” from China Daily

- “2-Year-Old Girl Ran Over By Van & Ignored by 18 Bystanders” from chinaSMACK

- “‘Good people and good deeds’ should never be tarnished” from Xinhua News

- “Mother testifies to good character of rescuer” from China Daily

- “Chinese Debate Aiding Strangers After Toddler’s Critical Injury” from the New York Times

- “Would you lift a hand to help?” from the China Media Project

- “Teen accused of hurting woman” from China Daily

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: altruism, extortion, netizens, online public opinion, road accidents, road safety
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The Cangzhou, Hebei peasant Chen Tongmei repeatedly traveled to the capital to seek an audience with higher-ups [to report grievances against the local Hebei government]. After returning, the Cangzhou government made arrangements to compensate Chen (they agreed on 100,000 RMB), sort of like keep-your-mouth-shut money, the meaning was ‘don’t go report to Beijing again’.

At this point the story diverges: One country cadre says that Chen suspected 100,000 was too little, and demanded 200,000. Three village cadres say Chen Tongmei didn’t want compensation, only justice. Afterwards, Chen was arrested on suspicion of trying to extort money from the government, and sentenced to five years in prison.

At the same time [Chen was being sentenced] in Cangzhou there were all kinds of cases of rural citizens extorting the government or the courts. These peasants were all sentenced, just like Chen Tongmei.

What’s interesting is that after the Chen Tongmei case the government had tasted something sweet [and didn't want to let it go]. They started directly consulting with peasants who wanted to report things to Beijing, saying 300,000 RMB to not report [their grievances].

The peasants responded, and wrote guarantees [they wouldn't report to the Beijing if they received the money]. Then, out of the blue, PSB officers would appear and take the peasants away, saying they [were trying to] extort the government.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: extortion, hebei, local power, petitioners
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Meanwhile, ESWN has translated an article from Secret China analyzing real reporters’ salaries in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an and Chongqing.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2004. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: extortion, media conditions
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