Han Han’s early replies were entertaining in their earnestness and snarky vulgarity. He provided a straightforward account of his blog-writing habits to explain how he could post in between race events, and then flipped Mai Tian’s reasoning around to cast aspersions on his sexual prowess. He offered a 20 million yuan purse and the copyrights to his entire oeuvre as a reward anyone giving conclusive proof of having ghostwritten for him. And, perhaps unwisely, he took a few potshots at Fang Zhouzi (方舟子), who up until that point had needled Han Han for a few minor writing mistakes but had otherwise shown no great interest in the argument.

Going up against Fang Zhouzi is a risky thing. A science writer better known for his work exposing academic fraud and intellectual dishonesty, Fang Zhouzi is a tenacious opponent who has an arsenal of online debating tactics at his fingertips. He brings up questions one by one, beginning with minor points that might seem trivial to explain or brush aside, and then when his target takes the bait, he charges in with more evidence showing a pattern of deceit. This technique, which he employed successfully in 2010 to reveal Tang Jun’s worthless diploma as well as in a more recent campaign to completely discredit Luo Yonghao (罗永浩), a popular internet personality who had insulted his wife, is how he went to work on Han Han ….

As in the best flame wars, Han Han PK Fang Zhouzi has been a comedy goldmine. Quick wit, outrageous accusations, dodgy amateur textual analysis, passionate debaters falling prey to the simplest of conversational gambits – if I was a conspiracy theorist I’d wonder whether Sina had engineered the whole thing to keep people refreshing their microblog feeds over the long holiday.

Read more about Han Han and Fang Zhouzi via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blogging, danwei, Fang Zhouzi, Han Han
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Beijing Police Bureau announced last night that they have cracked the case of Fang Zhouzi’s assault. They identified Xiao Chuanguo, the professor who pioneered the controversial “Xiao’s Procedure” and a long-time target of Fang Zhouzi’s fraud exposure, as the mastermind behind the attack. Xiao Chuanguo and four other suspects are currently detained by the police.

Police also said that they had uncovered iron hammers and steel pipes, tools that were used in separate previous attacks on Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic fraud, Fang Zhouzi, science, thugs
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What these two cases also have in common is the role played by China’s science advocates – such as Fang Xuanchang, science and technology editor at Caijing magazine, and the biochemist-turned-columnist Fang Shimin (no relation, better known by his pen name Fang Zhouzi), who runs the influential (though frequently blocked) watchdog website New Threads.

Fang Zhouzi, sometimes called the “science cop”, claims to have exposed more than 900 cases of academic fraud in China. It was his investigation that brought to light the controversy around Tang Jun’s qualifications. Tang has since said he will sue Fang for libel – and it’s not the first time he has faced such a threat. In 2006 Fang dismissed as unfounded the claim that the academic Liu Zihua had used ancient Chinese philosophy to discover a tenth planet in the solar system. Despite the fact Liu had already been dead for 14 years, his family successfully sued Fang, fining him 20,000 yuan (around £2,000).

This libel judgement led Song Zhenghai, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute for the History of Natural Science, to launch a petition to remove the term “pseudoscience” from the country’s science popularisation law, claiming Fang had used the term to help stifle “innovative sciences based on traditional cultures”. The petition was unsuccessful, although it was signed by 150 advocates of traditional theories in science and medicine. And while the censorious use of libel laws to stifle legitimate journalism and debate is worrying, some of the other reactions to the Chinese rationalists have been more shocking, veering into anger, paranoia – and even violence.

The Humanist blog also reports on the recent attack suffered by Fang Zhouzi; both he and Fang Xuanchang have been brutally attacked in recent months. Read more about the issue of academic integrity and Tang Jun’s case via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic corruption, Fang Xuanchang, Fang Zhouzi, fraud, science plagiarism, Tang Jun
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Fang Zhouzi, who is known as a “science cop” for battling against pseudoscience and academic misconduct, was attacked Sunday evening near his residence in Beijing, according to his wife’s posting in his microblog on China’s news portal Sina.com.cn.

The posting reads: “I’m Fang’s wife. Just a moment ago near our home, Fang Zhouzi got slightly hurt by an attack from two men using pepper water and hammers.”

According to a news report from caing.com, two men who ambushed near his apartment sprayed pepper water into Fang’s eyes and hit him with hammers on his back when he returned from an interview at a tea house nearby at around 5 pm.

Fang was part of a community of journalists and activists investigating fraud in the scientific community. One of his cohorts, Fang Xuanchang, was also brutally attacked this year. Read more about Fang Zhouzi, who was named one of the 20 most influential figures in Chinese cyberspace by Southern Metropolis Daily in 2008, via CDT.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: academic corruption, Fang Zhouzi, fraud
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“A whole new world of expression and influencing public opinion has come to China with the spread of the Internet. The Internet provides people in China an unprecedented platform to express themselves, a place that’s boundless and centerless, and has brought about an explosion of personal expression.

Traditional elites in the Chinese society can no longer monopolize the power to shape public opinion, as ordinary citizens and anonymous bloggers are becoming more and more influential in online forums and blogs.

One can no longer ignore the boisterous opinions posted on the Internet, because they are powerful enough to bring significant change to the real world.

A group of opinion leaders stands out among the sea of bloggers and commentators on the Internet. Some of them were originally well-known intellectuals, and their influence has been expanded by the Internet. Some of them were not known to the public at all, but the Internet has given them an opportunity to reach an audience of tens of millions.

They come from a variety of professions, ranging from business executives to employees, from officials to scholars, from professors to freelancers. But they belong to the single community of netizens when they express their opinions on the Internet.
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We have selected 20 of them as representatives in order to paint a collective portrait of the influential figures in China’s Internet era.

Those selected are active on the Internet, are well-known to the public and possess a considerable amount of power in influencing public opinion.

They are different from traditional intellectuals not only in the tools they use — instead of pen and paper, they use keyboards and web pages — but also in their style of writing. They are much more personal and casual…

They are put into six categories, based on the subject and style of their writings:
Public Enlightenment: He Weifang, Li Yinhe, Xiao Han, Wang Shuya;
Criticism on the Establishment: Song Zude, Han Han, Fang Zhouzi;
Satire: Tao Tie, Qian Liexian, Wang Xiaofeng, Hecaitou;
General Commentary: Shiniankancai, Wuyuesanren, Lian Yue, An Ti, Yang Hengjun;
Rebellious: Mu Zi Mei, Luo Yonghao;
Business & Economics: Han Zhiguo, Ren Zhiqiang. ”

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, Fang Zhouzi, Han Han, He Weifang, hecaitou, Li Yinhe, Lian Yue, Luo Yonghao, Michael Anti, Muzimei, online public opinion, Shiniankancai, Song Zude, wang xiaofeng, wang yi, Wuyuesanren, Xiao Han, Yang Hengjun
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The crisis of tainted food is still spreading deeper and wider in China. Melamine contamination is now found in milk, dairy products, candies, and chicken eggs. It has now become apparent that, for many years, the chemical melamine has been added to animal feed and milk to artificially inflate the reading of protein levels. This intentional act is responsible for the pet food scare a year and half ago and has now caused four infant deaths and thousands of children in hospitals suffering from kidney stones and other illnesses.

Although the addition of melamine has been a wide-known secret in China, nobody really know how it got started. About a month ago, a netter posted in XYS an advertisement of technology transfer, dated July 30, 1999, from the Chinese Academy of Science. The ad promotes a new, cheap, and easy-to-make additive for animal feed that would boost the nitrogen content of the feed. It had a simple description of the raw materials (industrial organic chemicals and fertilizers) and equipments (boilers, mixers, and driers) involved and a price for the expertise and training. It did not, however, disclose the name or content of the additive.

See also a previous CDT post: “Greed, Science, and Melamine,” from an Asia Times article.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese Academy of Science, Fang Zhouzi, melamine
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A philosopher has thrown down the gauntlet and asked a science maverick to a duel. Since we are living in the 21st century, to make it “civilized,” in the philosopher’s words, whoever loses the contest will commit suicide “in a civilized manner.”

You might think this is a plot from a romantic story penned by Pushkin.

But no, it happens in present-day China, and is more of a raucous farce than a play of burning passion and green-eyed jealousy.

The philosopher is Li Ming ÔºàȪéÈ?£Ôºâ, who claims he has solved the “four-colour theorem” by using the theories of Lao Tzu ÔºàËÄÅÂ?êÔºâand Kant ÔºàÂ??Âæ?Ôºâ. Actually he cracked the case six years ago. It all boils down to six pages, three for text and three for graphs. [Full Text]

See also related Chinese article here.

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, Fang Zhouzi, Li Ming, online culture
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