From The Southern Weekend (in Chinese), translated by EastSouthWestNorth (link):
“Hello to everybody! I am Fu Rong, the county mayor of the People’s Government of Lingao county.”
The county mayor of Lingao county, Hainan province, used this as the introduction in his headlong plunge into an Internet forum.
It is nothing new that government officials get on the Internet to read about current affairs, and they even “submerged under water” (anonymously and/or without announcing their presence) at the various Internet forums.
But such a direct public disclosure of identify must be the first in history of Chinese BBS history, according to the chief-editor of the famous Tianya Club forum.
This county mayor who went on the Internet to chat without using a sock puppet experienced a level of government-citizen interaction hitherto unseen.
Is this person really a county mayor?
