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Video: Danwei: China Blogger Conference 2009
Danwei has produced a video from the 5th annual Chinese blogger conference, held in November in Lianzhou, Guangdong, which includes interviews with bloggers Chang Ping 长平, Bei Feng 北风, Tiger Temple 老虎庙, Teng Biao 藤彪, Hu Yong 胡泳, Zuola 左拉, Zhai Minglei 翟明磊, Ran Yunfei 冉云飞, and Rebecca Mackinnon:
China blogger conference 2009 in Lianzhou from Danwei on Vimeo.
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- December 7, 2009 9:54 PM
Ran Yunfei (冉云飞): Where Will the Fear End? A Talk that Could Not Be Delivered
Blogger Ran Yunfei (冉云飞) posted the following on one of his blogs. CDT thanks the translator, who wishes to remain anonymous:
November 4, 2009

Ran Yunfei note: This is a talk I had planned to deliver at the invitation of some friends in at academic meeting at Hong Kong University. Since I was not able to go there to deliver it, I wrote it and gave it to them as a journal article. Actually when I take part in a colloquium or give a talk, I never write out an outline, much less write out a speech before I give it so that I could think it over carefully. I admire those who when they do things can get get every little detail right, and can write out their speech word for word before they give it. As for me, I feel that doing that detracts from the spontaneous nature of a speech and will make the audience feel like they are just listening to a recording, making it less interesting. These are my thoughts for sending along by means of the web, blogs etc., please let me have your comments.

November 4, 2009 6:40 at Chengdu
In my childhood I lived in the Dawulin mountain district. When I read Tao Yuanming’s “Peach Blossom Spring”, I thought the place described there was very much like my home area. The sky, the limestone caves, the underground river, the stalactites and the karst formations — they all felt like home. Naturally my home town of Xiyang County, Chongqing City and Changde County, Hunan Province as well as some other places argued constantly that they were the true origin of this imaginary “Peach Blossom Spring”. The two areas fought it out for top billing. Naturally commercial motives for this were far stronger than any desire to learn about the past to understand the present or any scientific motivation.
I myself didn’t care just where the “Peace Blossom Spring” originated from; what really interested me was taking part in the exploration of those limestone caves, row on those underground rivers, and climbing up towards the sky. I wanted to experience what Wang Anshi said in his “Traveling in Zen Mountain Chronicle” — “The greatest beauties and wonders of the world, extraordinary views, are often in dangerous and distant places, and so seldom visited. Therefore only the ambitious ever reach them.” One time a group of us children, large and small, lit a branch and squeezed into a big, dark, silent cave that had many passageways. Bats were flying around and we didn’t know just how far it went. The timid turned back, while the braver ones pressed forward. Later, even the bravest lost their confidence and felt they had to turn back. But we had lost our way. Everyone was reproachful of each other but didn’t say a word. Hopelessness and fear was spreading, our torment felt like how after having been bitten by a poisonous snake, the numbness spreading little by little across the entire body and then breathing becomes difficult. We felt that a great calamity had befallen us.
As time passed slowly by, we still couldn’t find our way to the exit. Everyone kept quiet, the air was stifling, and then a few of the children started to cry. The crying, catalyzed by that pitch black darkness and our helplessness, spread the feeling of helplessness and made us feel even more afraid. I and another of the more reckless children said, “Cry, cry, what good is crying going to do you?” We wanted to keep walking but every little while we took turns yelling out. Staying depressed and quiet and not yelling out our feelings will make it impossible for our families to find us. This certainly true, since a voice carries much further than the light from a small flame. Not long afterwards, one part of the group of people looking for us children came and found our group of tired and hungry children. Nearly all the children started to cry softly, enjoying their rescue and feeling that they had gotten their lives back.
Yes, you may have guessed it — I want to use this experience of misfortune from my childhood to explain to everyone why I have been writing a blog for a long time, and have been adding an entry to it every day.
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- November 7, 2009 8:04 PM
Chinese Start Postcard Drive to Support Dissidents
From Reuters:
Chinese web users have launched a postcard campaign to support dissidents in prisons and to protest against their detention, one of the organizers told Reuters.
Chinese Internet activists launched their first postcard campaign last month, in a little-known case of a man detained in Fujian province in southern China.
They are now expanding the campaign to support better-known activists, including legal aid lawyer Xu Zhiyong and earthquake victim advocate Tan Zuoren.
“It depends on the prison or detention house whether they can receive the postcards,” wrote Wen Yunchao, the blogger who initiated the idea.
“But pressure could be felt when huge amounts of postcards are flooding in.”
Read also on CDT: “Guo Baofeng, Your Mother is Calling You Home for Dinner!” (With Slideshow)
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- August 7, 2009 5:15 PM
Recent Defamation Cases and Abuse of Local Power
In a number of recent cases, local officials have brought defamation or libel charges against citizens who criticized them. In discussing these cases on their blogs and in their writing, Chinese journalists and academics have brought up broader issues of freedom of information and local power. China Media Project translates a blog post by People’s University Professor Zhang Ming about the recent cases:
After reading about Henan’s Wang Shuai (王帅) case and Inner Mongolia’s Wu Baoquan (吴保全) case (both were accused of crimes after criticizing the government), my initial response was that these were classic cases of wenziyu (文字狱), [or being jailed for one’s words]. But when I thought more carefully about it, these cases are a bit different from ancient cases of wenziyu [in China]. Ancient cases of wenziyu were generally initiated on the behalf of rulers at the highest level [such as the emperor], and the goal was to strive for uniformity of thought and opinion. Clearly, those who pursued and persecuted Wang Shuai and Wu Baoquan did not have such lofty priorities. What they wanted, first and foremost, was to ensure that information did not leak out, and secondly, that the dignity of the [local] ruler was preserved . . . We have every indication that this first priority was the most pressing of all.
We must admit that some of our local officials have made progress, and if the people, having had a bit too much to drink, criticize those who govern them, most will be spared revenge so long as they don’t publicly shake a finger at a leader’s nose. And there are even those [leaders] who might hear [the insults] but pretend not to. But when [local officials] mobilize police strength to conduct a manhunt for Wang Shuai over vast distances, when they direct the courts to sentence Wang Baoquan, answering his subsequent legal appeal by upping the severity of his sentence, when they march to war, when they break a butterfly on the wheel — this, certainly, is about expending every possible effort in the shortest space of time to keep a lid on information. It is about silencing the crowd with a single act of violence, so that they think twice before following the example.
The Siweiluozi blog has been following these cases as well. Most recently, the blog posted a translation of a piece by writer Ran Yunfei titled “The Shameless, Hidden Facts of the Deng Yonggu Case,” about the case brought against a Sichuan forestry bureau worker who alleged misconduct in a reforestation project:
For making a signed accusation of corruption in the reforestation work being done in Gaosheng Township, Deng Yonggu has been falsely accused by the Pengxi County Procuratorate of defamation. Considering the principle under which there should be no crime if no one brings suit, for the public prosecutor to bring suit in this case is, from one perspective, a colossal joke. Even if one’s criticisms of the government turned out not to be factual, it should never constitute defamation—this is basic common sense. If the officials who were criticized feel that they were libeled, why shouldn’t they bring suit themselves and, at the same time, allow neutral investigators to examine whether what Deng Yonggu alleged is true? By not making the truth public and not discussing the truth of what Deng Yonggu alleged, prosecutors have taken it upon themselves to exonerate and illegally shield these few officials tagged as “scum.”
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- April 30, 2009 9:49 AM
More Charter 08 Casualties: Bullog Purged, Ran Yunfei Suspended
C.A. Yeung writes in the Under the Jacaranda Tree blog:
Bullog 牛博网, a progressive blog portal, becomes the next victim of a purge that has swept across the blogosphere in China since the release of Charter 08. As a result, Bullog lost two of its most popular bloggers: Ran Yunfei 冉云飞 and Baozuitun 饱醉豚 (literally translated as the Gluttonous Suckling Pig). It is believed that both bloggers were suspended for publishing articles about the Charter. Ran Yunfei is also among the first group of 303 signatories.
It is regrettable how Luo Yonghao 罗永浩, the owner of Bullog, once considered a very “bull” (Chinese Internet jargon for “cool”) blogger himself, had to succumb to pressure from the CCP censors in order to protect his site from closure. Luo exercises self-censorship for very good reasons, of course, particularly when Bullog is the home of some best names in the Chinese language blogosphere – Chai Jing 柴静, Han Han 韩寒, Lian Yue 连岳, Wang Xiaoshan 王小山, Zhao Mu 赵牧 – just to name a few. This is not the first time Bullog is at the mercy of the butcher. In October 2007, Bullog was temporarily suspended. Permission to reopen was eventually granted after Luo had agreed to be vigilant about the content of his site.
For Ran Yunfei, this is the second time this year his blog has been forced to close down. Earlier in February, Ran’s blog at Tianya 天涯社区 was “harmonized” (被和谐了) as well.
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- December 29, 2008 11:35 AM
Ran Yunfei: Reclaiming China’s Rights
From Comment is free:
The 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights witnesses more human rights violations in China. A couple of days ago, police in Shanghai detained Liu Xiaobo, an intellectual and human rights activist, who had been in and out of prison in the last two decades because of his activism.
The reason this time is the ‘08 Charter, a document calling for constitutional reform in China, initiated by Liu Xiaobo and his colleagues, and signed by more than 300 people, including me. Hearing the news, I felt not only angry, but also pity towards the authorities whose fierce reaction can’t disguise the fear underneath. One will always claim and protect one’s rights. No authority can stop that.
As ordinary people, we just want to live a normal and peaceful life. But we want to live it with dignity. The coming economic crisis has made many people more alert to their rights, or lack of them. In China, the current crisis is not only the consequence of a global economic crisis, but also the result of a corrupt and authoritarian one-party system. Many people live a hard life not because of the downturn of the world economy, but because their rights have been taken away by the authorities. I know many intellectuals like Liu Xiabo who champion a peaceful and non-violence approach to achieve political reform. However, others may not be so patient. There have already been numerous instances of social unrest in China recently. To make things worse, the authorities seem to know only one response: to suppress any incident, which inevitably worsens the crisis.
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- December 14, 2008 12:36 AM
China: Why wait for the media to tell your story when you can blog it yourself? (4/4)- John Kennedy
From Global Voices Online:
It’s something impossible to predict. If this system doesn’t change, if there is no democratization, then it’ll be just like I said when we were commemorating Mr. Hu Yaobang“we were commemorating him, not mythologizing him”it would be impossible for China’s politics to be put straight by just one person. To think so is childish and blind. Similarly, I said that if this system doesn’t change, and change to a democratic system, adopting universal values, our values, remade by our people”I feel many people are not independent, many have no thoughts or ideas of their own, whose values are messed up, who lack a moral bottom line, lack faith and support”if these things don’t change, in addition to a change in the political system, if there isn’t set up a shift towards a democratic and free system, I can only say one thing, that the the recurrence of movements like the Cultural Revolution and the anti-right campaign is then totally possible….
Like last year’s Super Girl, on which many people wrote many things. But I only wrote one piece, and in classical Chinese at that. I said that after 1949 and since the 1950s, the masses have been lacking entertainment, and that Super Girl was like playing a musical instrument beneath a goldthread tree, or finding happiness in trying times, warming one’s self by the mouth of the volcano, making merry amid the sounds of tragedy….[Full Text]
See also: (1/4), (2/4), (3/4).
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- July 7, 2006 7:44 AM
China: Victims of China’s Cultural Revolution, your stories can always be blogged (3/4) – John Kennedy
From Global Voices Online:
Regarding the relationship between those who were purged and the ruling Party, you’ve just put it very well. China’s intellectuals and China’s citizens are all very nice and good. My article of just two days ago, “The more shameless the government gets, the more moved the people get,” made just this point. He can no longer tell the difference. He’s been brainwashed by the great, glorious and all-knowing for fifty years and now he can’t change. Attached to the end of that post of mine are over four hundred comments, four to five of which say I don’t understand the government. I say the common people understand the government just fine. It’s the government that doesn’t understand the people. I’ll tell ya, this kind of relationship is an indentured relationship. That is, ‘I’ve paid my taxes, now you must do things for me.’ To that I say that many times, this government’s actions are just like those of a bandit’s. I pay my taxes and not only does the government not help me, but instead becomes hostile. You tell me, is or isn’t that a bandit? [Full Text]
See also: Part (2/4) and Part (1/4), (4/4) to come.
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- July 4, 2006 2:42 PM
China: Revolution’s victims’ stories blogged, not forgotten (2/4) – John Kennedy
From Global Voices Online:
…What I mean to say is that practically with the first wave of reforming through land laborÔºàÂúüÊîπÔºâ, large numbers of intellectuals had already had the piss frightened out of them. A few of them might have have stronger bodies, maybe they managed to hold it, but in the end, 1957, all of them had been shaken out. It can be said thus: all intellectuals had given up by 1957, such people no longer even existed. Even Liang ShumingÔºàÊ¢ÅÊº±Ê∫üÔºâ had opposed Mao Zedong since 1953, but in the end went silent as well. And Liang Shuming was really cool. A book came out recently, “Will This World Be Well Again?”ÔºàËøô‰∏™‰∏ñÁïå‰ºöÂ•ΩÂêóÔºüÔºâ, conversations between Liang Shuming and American professor Ai Kai. Liang’s education isn’t very high, he’s the same age as Mao Zedong. The basic knowledge of his early education wasn’t very high; he hasn’t even read the China studies classics. That’s why I feel Mr. Liang Shuming’s academic contributions are certainly not hight. But Mr. Liang’s contribution of personal moral character in the 20th century, I feel, is enough to make the majority of intellectuals blush with shame. This person opposed Mao Zedong, opposed many things….[Full Text]
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- June 23, 2006 6:03 AM
China: Revolution’s victims’ stories blogged, not forgotten (1/4) – John Kennedy
From Global Voices Online:
One party, one dictatorship, we know that everything in life is involved with the monopoly industry; whether it be the telephone company, the post office, the railways, all are run poorly. This is monopoly in economic life, and monopoly in political life is the one party dictatorship. In this country of ours the biggest monopoly is that of one party rule. And this party, this organization, is restrictive to the point of malice, of cruelty. That’s why it inherently cannot accomodate intellectuals. Since the day it came into being, not only has it been the enemy of democracy, but the enemy of freedom as well. It is the enemy of the authentic intellectual. In fact it is the root cause of the 1957 labelling as rightists of a large number of intellectuals. The rectification of the AB Group in the 1930s and the rectification movement in the 1940s were just a sort of rehearsal for the anti-right campaign in 1957. To use Communist Party talk, it was a small-scale battle. And 1957 was a large-scale strategy drill. 1966’s Cultural Revolution verged on field-army warfare. [Full Text]
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- June 15, 2006 5:32 AM